


Fire Fight

by sidehoryuuzaki



Category: Death Note & Related Fandoms
Genre: Accidental summoning, Buddy Cop AU, Demon AU, F/M, Gore, Poor Naomi tbh, Supernatural Elements, romcom
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-04-02
Updated: 2019-11-17
Packaged: 2020-01-01 05:26:00
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 12
Words: 28,545
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18329519
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sidehoryuuzaki/pseuds/sidehoryuuzaki
Summary: Naomi just wanted to accept that her previous relationship was done. Raye had finally taken his things from her house way after the fact, and she was ready to just move on. Life has an odd way of coming for those who just want some peace and quiet, though, and after drunkenly completing a ritual, this fire demon just won't leave... Oh, and did she mention he gets her soul after she dies now? Yeah, that's a thing. What else should she have expected, really? Meeting a nice guy and settling down? Please, Naomi never does anything the easy way.





	1. Hereditary

**Author's Note:**

> Another fic! Another fic!! I just adore writing for this fandom. I actually wrote most of this first chapter while listening to Hellbent by Mystery Skulls. And actually part of the next chapter, too... You can come find me on Twitter (@sidehoryuuzaki) and on Tumblr (side-ho-ryuuzaki) if you ever want to talk!

If anyone could actually see, they were fucking lying. This she was absolutely certain of. The lights spun and expanded and did odd things in many odd colors, with ever changing frequency, and somewhere towards what could possibly be called the back of the room, Naomi sipped her drink without much excitement. She’d never been one for clubbing, but here she was, all because Halle had begged her.

Unlimited strawberry martinis could only make up for so much. If one more man tried to proposition her, she was going to break someone’s nose.

She sipped her third martini slowly, not too drunk from how slowly she was drinking each one. She was at a nice buzzed, but god, did they have to play this shit? Remixes of Justin Bieber were not her favorite, in the fucking slightest, but she supposed it was almost to be expected of the place they were at. Everything in there was a disgusting pink, like pepto bismol.

“Naomi!” Halle panted as she came closer. “Naomi!”

Instinctively, Naomi held out Halle’s beer for her, and Halle chugged down way too much all at once.

“That’s not the best idea,” Naomi warned her.

“You’re just not drunk enough,” Halle shot back. “Y’know, there’s some cute guys out there. I’m sure one of them might like your phone number.”

“And I want a pony, so we’re both going to be disappointed.” Halle snorted at that and clinked her glass to Naomi’s, before chugging some more. “These guys aren’t really my type.”

A few of them weren’t even wearing their shirts. It was ridiculous and weird, like it was some display for each other and not actually for anyone else, and Naomi cringed as she looked at them.

“That’s fair,” Halle said with a shrug. “I’m just not as picky as you, though.”

“That’s your best quality,” Naomi informed her. “It’s how we keep finding new taco places.”

Halle laughed at that, loudly and more than a little drunkenly. “C’mon, you finally got rid of Raye’s stuff. More than a year later, and his shit is gone! That’s exciting and you should be celebrating.”

“I don’t want to celebrate that,” Naomi groaned. “I’m here because you wanted to be.”

“Because I wanted you to have some fun.” Naomi rolled her eyes for dramatic effect, but Halle sighed. “I guess it didn’t work out that way, but I’m trying. What would you have rathered?”

“For you to have waited, first of all, until _all_ of Raye’s shit was gone,” Naomi sighed. “I still have a box of his. It looks like some pretty old stuff, and I didn’t know what to do with it.”

“Really?” Halle snorted. “Damn. He didn’t even take it all with him? I swear, that guy.”

“I’m glad he took any of it,” Naomi said. “He didn’t have to come and grab it at all.”

It’d been odd, to have seen him again after so long. Raye had looked good, better than when they had been together, and it’d hurt in a way Naomi didn’t expect it to. The anger, under the surface, had still been there but some odd other thing had taken over her and made her remember only the good times when Raye had knocked on her door. After he was gone, and as the door closed once more, the sound finally reminded her why she’d broken it off in the first place.

Naomi fell silent as she remembered the way Raye had smiled apologetically and said how sorry he was that he’d left so much in the attic. How he’d rubbed the back of his neck when he admitted he hadn’t checked there. It weighed down on Naomi for a moment before she took another sip of her martini.

“I’m sorry,” Halle told her. “I’m sorry you had to see him.”

“I’m sorry he didn’t even think about the attic,” Naomi said with a shrug. “Couldn’t think ahead even a year later. Jesus, why did I like him again?”

Halle laughed heavily and lacking the restraint sober people typically had, her smile a little too wide and her voice just a bit too loud. They probably needed to leave soon, before Halle started puking like she did every fucking time, and Naomi started to pull her phone out.

“He had a cute ass,” Halle finally got out. “And I mean. He seemed decent enough when you two were dating.”

“Yeah, ‘til he decided I didn’t need a job ever again,” Naomi grumbled. “I know I said I wanted to leave my job, but he was a bit too enthusiastic.”

“Whatever about him. You’re able to seek greener pastures now.”

It was true, Naomi knew. With some amount of determination, she chugged the rest of her martini and Halle whooped somewhere beside her. She didn’t need him. She didn’t have to have any feelings for him anymore.

“Do you want to get out of here?” Halle suddenly cut in. “Go back and just… Burn that last box?”

The idea bounced around in Naomi’s brain for a while, so long that Halle took another finishing chug of her beer in the time it took before Naomi got to her answer.

“Oh _god_ yes,” Naomi finally breathed. “I’ll order the Uber.”

Halle couldn’t contain her cackles as Naomi pulled out her phone, before laughing even harder as Naomi told her that a blue Honda was coming to pick them up.

~~

“Your attic is like something out of a horror movie.”

There was no way Naomi was getting Halle, drunk and more than a little puke-y, up the tiny little ladder-stair-thing into her attic. This she knew with certainty, but the unfortunate other part of it was that Naomi wasn’t totally sure if she could get herself up them. After having downed an entire margarita in the ten minutes before the Uber arrived, Naomi was weaving a bit herself, and those stairs were tiny.

“Yeah, like _Hereditary_ ,” Naomi snorted out. “If I find the dead corpse of my mom in there, we’re calling it quits.”

“Hail Paimon!”

Naomi rolled her eyes and started giggling as she tried to get her first foot on the ladder. After her foot slid off twice, she removed her high-heels and finally started making her way up.

When she first got to the top, she slowly turned around and checked the entire attic for any dead bodies. Finding none, she pulled herself into the tiny space and immediately stubbed her toe on a box.

“Shit!” she cursed. “Fucking Raye!”

“What is it? Is this place haunted? Stomp twice if you need me to come and save you.”

“No,” Naomi groaned. “Raye just left this box right next to the entrance.”

Somewhat blindly in the dark room, she picked up the box at her feet and started trying to carefully make her way back down the ladder. Jesus fuck, what did Raye have in this thing? Some fucking bricks? It was heavy, and if Naomi hurt herself by dropping it, she was sending him the bill. She moved the box towards Halle.

“Take this for a second,” Naomi said to Halle. “And watch out, Raye left some fucking cement, I guess.”

“Fuck,” Halle wheezed as she took it. “This better be flammable.”

Getting the box to Naomi’s living room was a whole other adventure. Halle and Naomi took turns drunkenly carrying it for a few feet before having to take a break to have some air and some more beer they went and got from Naomi’s fridge and to light a few of Naomi’s candles. By the time they actually got to the living room, each was a bit more drunk and the passage of time no longer seemed real to them as the little candles they decided was their flame lit the room ominously.

“Okay, let’s open this fucker up,” Naomi huffed out.

“You do the honors.”

Dramatically and a bit sloppily, Naomi threw the lid off the box, revealing to them the source of the heaviness.

How large of a book was it?

“The fuck?” Halle slurred.

“What the hell, Raye?” Naomi grumbled. “What is this…?”

The cover was maybe a brown at some point. It was grey with dust now, and the edges were so worn that they were round. Getting the thing out of the box was a whole new hassle as the bottom of it had been in water at some point, and the box had made a moldy seal to the stupid thing.

“Ouch!” Naomi hissed. Ooh, a paper cut. “Ugh, fuck.”

“What is this thing?” Halle asked.

Naomi had no fucking clue. She could have taken any number of guesses, but somehow she doubted any of them would be right.

“Let’s find out, I guess.”

To say it resisted being opened was an understatement. The spine cracked and peeled back as Naomi attempted to force the damn thing open, until finally, after struggling for several long seconds, the book popped open almost audibly, and Naomi nearly shrieked as she got a second paper cut on the edges of the book.

“Motherfucker!” Naomi seethed. “Why does this thing hate me?”

“Uh… Is that like, German?”

_What in the fresh hell was this?_

German was a guess, she supposed. It certainly wasn’t anything she recognized, even if it seemed to share the English alphabet. Naomi tapped a finger to it before cursing up a storm as she left some blood on the page.

“Crap,” Naomi sighed. “I hope I don’t get some disease.”

“What does that even say?” Halle slurred out.

Naomi looked at Halle sharply, and Halle sighed. “You want me to read this out loud?”

The look on Naomi’s face must have been comical, because Halle started giggling. “Oh, c’mon. Ghosts and shit aren’t real.”

“I don’t exactly want to take any chances on that, though.”

“Fine,” Halle huffed. “Hand it to me. I’ll read it.”

Halle attempted to reach out and grab the book, but instead pressed Naomi’s hand more firmly into the side. Naomi shrieked a bit as more blood was forced out of her finger and onto the page, smack dab in the middle of some weird shape on it, and Naomi finally snatched her hand away and let Halle have it.

“Sorry,” Halle apologized. “I didn’t mean to.”

“Whatever,” Naomi whimpered. “Go ahead and make your bad decision while I get a bandaid.”

As she walked away, she heard her idiotic friend start attempting to sound out words behind her. It was something very harsh and low, and Naomi could believe it was German, honestly. She stepped into the bathroom and closed the door, a small sigh escaping her.

As she turned the water on to wash her hand, her lights flickered a bit, and Naomi glared until they stopped. Fuck, did she need to replace the bulb again?

The only bandaids she had left were some Hello Kitty ones, so she supposed they’d have to do. Hello Kitty and Dear Daniel were waving at her from her fingers, and in the low lighting of her bathroom, she swore those dipshits looked smug.

She opened the door just in time for Halle to rush past her and to the toilet, and Naomi sighed.

“I’ll go get the fire started,” Naomi offered. “Just join me when you’re done.”

The only response she got was Halle puking loudly.

~~

Her headache could probably kill a man, Naomi thought. Or potentially even down an elephant, as the sun shined through her windows. Halle had been right, and Naomi was glad she’d taken the day off just in case.

She blinked heavily, Halle’s snores from her living room drifting into her ears. Halle was going to be even worse off than Naomi, considering, and why had Naomi agreed to shots after Halle finished vomiting again…?

With a huge wave of nausea, Naomi pushed herself up and attempted to even fathom the day ahead of her. She’d for sure need something to kill the headache, and Gatorade. That was a must. She also probably should order something for breakfast to be delivered, because there was no way in hell Naomi was cooking.

The feeling of a breeze and her curtains slowly swaying caught her attention and she squinted. Had she left her window open all night? Naomi shuffled over to it and slammed it shut, before she heard a whine behind her.

“Oh, please, don’t close that.”

She spun, quickly, fear and terror rushing into her like a waterfall into a tiny plastic cup, and her voice got stuck in her throat as he leaned his head in his hand and lounged in her bed. Wide, slightly crazed eyes looked at her in disgust before he sniffled.

“You reek of alcohol,” he informed her. “And your friend? Even worse.”

Naomi found her voice and screamed.


	2. The Conjuring

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> She summoned a fire demon. She summoned a god damn fire demon. Oh, God, what was she supposed to do? Who even is he? Why is he here? Naomi doesn't have any of those answers, and horrifically, neither does he. What was she supposed to do now? And Halle is going to get an earful when she wakes up.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The McDonald's near us is closed for renovations and I'm sad. I wanted their fries so badly... I wrote a lot of this chapter while listening to Timebomb by Walk the Moon! Should I start a playlist for what I listen to while writing? Also I made a slight change to the title of Chapter 1. Feel free to come talk to me on Tumblr and Twitter!

“There’s really no need for the silver.”

The knife from her grandmother was small, but she jabbed it towards him, and he jumped back away from her. He had his hands up protectively, which didn’t quite match the bored expression on his face, and Naomi tried to remember if she brought someone home last night for some god forsaken reason.

“Who are you?” Naomi demanded. “Why are you in my house?!”

“Could you _not_ stab me?’ he asked calmly back. “Besides, _you_ summoned _me_ , so why would I know why I’m here?”

She paused at that, her brain trying to figure out how she’d summoned anything when she hadn’t even used her phone for the morning yet. She hadn’t even ordered breakfast, so he definitely wasn’t Uber Eats. She held the knife a bit higher.

“That still doesn’t tell me who you are!” Naomi yelled. “And summoned you? What the fuck does that mean?!”

“Oh, no, not another drunk,” he sighed. “Do humans like drunkenly signing demon deals or something?”

“Answer my questions!” Naomi warned as she took a step closer. “I’m warning you!”

He moved back again before, in the blink of an eye, he was gone. She could smell the ash in the air for a moment, her brain wondering if she’d made him up, before she jumped horrifically when she saw the burn mark in her carpet.

“To answer your first question, I don’t have a name,” came from the window behind her, and she spun as quickly as she could. He was on her windowsill and looking outside, his knees drawn to his chest and his thumb in his mouth. “You’re supposed to give me a name.”

“Fuck it, just show me your wallet!” Naomi told him. “I’m FBI, so don’t test me!”

He ignored her entirely. “And for your second question, yes, summoned. Although apparently that wasn’t an intentional summoning…”

Naomi backed up towards her closet as smoke started to rise out of his hand. Oh, god, he was an arsonist. _Oh god_ , she was about to be _burned alive_ in her own home. Her gun was hanging in her closet, she knew, and she scrambled for it.

“And I thought my ritual was hard to accidentally do,” he hummed. “I mean, you specifically have to put your blood in my sigil and you have to speak me into existence. Not like some of the others who just use a latin phrase because they hate themselves.”

His hand was on fire. Naomi stared in horror as he seemed much too nonchalant about it, his face revealing no signs of pain. The skin didn’t even crack and peel, and there wasn’t the smell of burning flesh.

“Oh my god, _oh my god_ , sir, you’re-!”

“On fire? Yes, I know,” he agreed. “I was meant to be a star.”

Messy black curls framed his smirking face, and Naomi was struck with a primordial fear that she’d never had before. Flames can only change color under certain circumstances, right? She tried to remember what she’d learned in her science classes all her life as his hand flame went from red, to blue, to white, and to pink.

“What… What are you?” she whispered horrifically.

For the tiniest moment, his eyes seemed to go as red as the fire before he blinked and they went back to a cold smoke grey. He sighed through his nose.

“I’m beyond your comprehension,” he said blandly. “And beyond your mortal rules.”

“Thank you, how helpful,” Naomi snapped before she could help herself. Amusement lit up his face as Naomi raised her gun again. “Now seriously, who are you?!”

His other hand went up in flames, and Naomi nearly dropped her gun. As he smiled at her, a single canine poked out and made her gasp out in horror.

“The closest thing you humans have to describing me is ‘fire demon.’”

Naomi calculated how likely she would be to legally get away with a warning shot and aimed for his shoulder.

~~

He hated bullets. He’d been on Earth all of six times, and somehow he’s been shot eight times. He suspected that it might have had something to do with being summoned in the United States for four of those times, but fuck, what a bunch of horseshit.

He plucked it out of his shoulder and sighed as the frightened woman shook. “Was that really necessary?”

“Wh-what…? How…?”

He’d just told her, hadn’t he? In the corner of his eye was where she’d left the silver knife on the bed, the only actually scary thing in the room for him. Was she going to stab him?

“It’s not silver, so,” he said with a shrug. “No luck.”

Her gun shook as her entire body was wracked with shivers and terror, and he would’ve been more amused, he supposed, if it weren’t for the fact that he was more just concerned. Who even owned a silver fucking knife these days? Last time he’d been around, which had been a while ago, he thinks, most people didn’t have silver knives!

“Naomi?!” the other one called from down the hall. “Naomi!”

Naomi, huh? Would’ve been nice if she’d introduced herself, but he supposed her scared and shaking form was a bit funny. He’d let it go for now.

“Naomi, I thought I heard a gunshot!”

He stared at Naomi until she lowered the gun fully, her eyes wide but her brows drawn sharply over them. The woman he’d seen in the living room when he’d first arrived burst in through the door and gasped.

“Who the fuck-!”

“We’ve already covered this part,” he said. “Can we just skip it?”

“Who are you?!” she shrieked. “Naomi who is-?”

“He’s a demon,” Naomi said quietly. “Halle, he’s a demon.”

Halle let out a short and rushed laugh before she stopped, Naomi’s face tight and serious. He huffed heavily at the ignorance as Halle and Naomi decided to have a staring contest.

“Again, that’s your closest word,” he grumbled out. “I’m actually beyond-”

“‘Beyond’ here is a demon,” Naomi cut him off, “and we summoned him last night.”

_No_. She did not just do that.

Halle blinked several times before her jaw dropped. “He’s a _what_?! But how the fuck did we do that?!”

“Because you decided to read that stupid fucking book!” Naomi finally snapped.

The two women started arguing back and forth as he sat in horror on the windowsill, his mind replaying Naomi’s words. Oh god. Oh god, no.

“ _Beyond_?” he yelped. “You named me fucking _Beyond_? That isn’t even a name!”

He was ignored in favor of them yelling at each other. Beyond, or so he apparently was, wallowed for a moment over his fate as someone with the worst name ever, and he’d been named fucking Dick once. He’d thought that had been the height of awful for names but well. He supposed humanity could always do worse.

“Well how do we get rid of him?” Halle asked as she gestured at Beyond. “Or is he just permanent until we die?”

Couldn’t people please just read contracts? “Until Naomi here dies,” he corrected. “It was her blood.”

“Oh, great, Halle, you condemned me! To a lifetime with this thing,” Naomi yelled angrily. “All because I got a paper cut!”

“I have feelings, you know,” Beyond informed her, offended. “And you signed my contract. Lifetime of service for your soul after. It’s not my fault you didn’t read the terms and conditions.”

Naomi went from mid-yell to silent and warbling within a second. Beyond was starting to get whiplash from humans and all their emotions, but she continued to not move on the knife, so he let himself enjoy the schadenfreude.

“I’m… I’m what?” Naomi fumbled. “You what…?”

“Naomi, I- I’m so sorry,” Halle tried. “I didn’t think it’d-”

Naomi crumpled to the floor, and Beyond nearly rolled his eyes at the melodrama of it all. So what about one fucking soul? That’s all it was. Now if they were talking ten souls, Beyond might have gotten the noise being made, but it was one measly thing.

“I’m going to hell,” Naomi whispered. “Oh my god.”

“Technically, no,” Beyond corrected. “It’s just one soul, though. You should be glad I don’t charge three souls for my services.”

The blonde one snorted angrily at him, and he raised an eyebrow at her. “Just one soul?!” Halle yelled at him. “Have some decency!”

“Did we all forget what I am or…?”

Naomi was looking at the knife in interest again, and he blinked himself across the room and in front of Naomi on the floor, his usual crouch placing him at eye level with the woman. Halle shrieked in what he assumed was horror, but he couldn’t have cared less at that exact moment.

“After you die, I get to do what I want with it,” he attempted to comfort. He slowly moved to be between her and it, and he tried to smile nicely. Her flinch said it didn’t come across that way. “So you’re not technically going to hell, or whatever you want to call it.”

“Thank you,” she said on a hiccuping sob. “How comforting of you.”

“Besides, you still get whatever human’s consider to be a long lifetime of me working for you,” he tried again as she finally looked away from the damn thing. “So that’s, what, another hundred years?”

“Humans don’t live to a hundred-thirty,” Naomi hiccuped. “Only about ninety if we’re lucky.”

“Wow,” he muttered before he could stop himself. “You’re all so fragile.”

Halle seemed to get the message and joined them on the floor, and Naomi, despite having just yelled at her, dropped her head onto Halle’s shoulder. Shock was a hell of a thing, he supposed, as neither one of them said anything for a long moment.

He let the silence eat them all up before he cleared his throat.

“Now that we’re all much calmer,” he began. “Let’s think about renaming me, okay?”

Naomi did not respond.

~~

It took some getting used to, she guessed, to the idea that there was a demon in her living room, especially when said demon was one like Beyond, and every time he moved around, something else was singed. Not that any of it mattered, really, not when she would eventually die and go to wherever the hell Beyond deemed fit.

Her couch could only provide so much comfort to her, not when it smelled like ash and alcohol, and Beyond whined again.

“And we’re sure I’m not getting a new name?” he whined. “I’ll even take Reginald.”

“No,” she said spitefully. “I think Beyond has grown on me.”

Halle had gone home about an hour ago, after comforting Naomi for about seven hours. Night was creeping over the house, creeping into her living room, and dark shadows made Beyond look even more creepy than before.

“Are you Japanese, Naomi?” he asked her. “Because I’m sure there are many Japanese names that would suit me.”

“I’ll make you a name tag tomorrow morning,” Naomi offered faux politely, “so you can really connect to Beyond like I have.”

Beyond huffed angrily, before he blinked himself into the seat next to her. Personal space must not have been something demons were overly concerned about, was it? Much too wide eyes stared at her as she stared at the wall.

“If you really want me to be named that, then I guess I will get used to it,” he tried. “Maybe I’ll even come to like it.”

“I’m excited to find out,” she shot back. “I really think it’s a good fit.”

That clearly wasn’t the answer he wanted, and he angrily flopped onto the sofa like a fish. Could she get him exorcised? Or would that just make him angry and he’d still have her soul anyways? Could she kill him to get rid of him?

“You’re cruel,” he finally croaked out. “You’d make quite the demon.”

That made her finally look at him, a cold fury in her. “Y’know, I could change your name. How does ‘asshole’ sound to you?”

“Most people speak to me with respect,” he sniffled from his childish fetal position. “I’m a god to some people.”

“Who?” Naomi snapped. “Yourself?”

She was a bit frightened by his silence, if she were honest. But hell, she was going to die eventually, right? What did it matter if it was now or not? He finally looked at her, his eyes the bright red she’d seen earlier, and as nothing else in her was functioning, her FBI training kicked in.

She tilted her head up and refused to look away.

“Did I hit a nerve?” she sneered.

“Watch your tone,” he warned her. His voice was just a rumble. “You don’t _have_ to have a full lifetime.”

“How scary. Are you going to slow roast me to death?” she hissed. “I’ll only be medium rare by the time the news ends, with those dinky things you call flames.”

You never back down to a criminal. It was her only saving grace as she whimpered internally, scared that he might actually kill her. She’d seen the same look he had across a table with more frequency than she wanted to admit, and finally, he blinked.

“I’m bored,” he randomly announced. She blinked to try to recover herself. “Give me something to do.”

“I don’t have anything,” she grumbled. “Can’t you entertain yourself?”

“If you gave me something to do, like killing an enemy, maybe, then yes, I could entertain myself,” he pouted. “And I bet you have plenty of enemies.”

Fine, if he wanted to be like that. Naomi glared at him angrily before she sniffed.

“You can start by cleaning up all your burns in here then,” she commanded. “And I’m sure the house needs some dusting.”

His head whipped up quickly, shock on his face as she forced herself to be bland. Vaguely, he looked mostly human for a moment before he settled back into unearthly weird, and he clicked his tongue a few times.

“You’re telling me, the immortal being who is-”

“Fire demon, your own words even,” she shortened. “Go on.”

His eye twitched. For a moment, it flickered back to red, but she didn’t back down. Frankly, she was too dead inside to care; shock had already completely drained her, and hell, the knowledge of her impending doom was taking the rest.

“You’re telling me the… The _fire demon_ , to clean your house?”

“Sorry, did I mumble?” she asked calmly. “It seems you heard me. And you work for me now, don’t you?”

Did she imagine a devil’s tail flickering back and forth, or had she actually seen that?

Naomi stared at him until he blinked into some other part of the house, her ears telling her he was in the kitchen.

“This isn’t what you’re supposed to have me do,” he grumbled.

Finally, she felt herself relax.


	3. House of Wax

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The human world is full of fascinating things such as the concept of going to work and the concept of humans working with dead people. It's weird to Beyond that so much care goes for one dead guy, but Naomi is letting him tag along. At least, for now.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Good morning! Just a heads up, next week I will be focusing solely on posting the two final chapters of _This Isn't a Noir Film_ and won't be putting out a chapter of this next week. Sorry about that! I'll have the next chapter of this up by early the week after instead. Thank you!

“Where are you going?”

She jumped, still not used to someone else being there, and dropped her boot onto the floor as Beyond, the asshole, made some noise she supposed was a laugh. It was a raspy, disgusting thing, and Naomi huffed angrily.

“Don’t just show up behind people,” she snapped.

“But where are you going?” he asked again. “And at such an early hour?”

Naomi blinked and tried to figure out what he was playing at before she realized he really didn’t know. How the fuck didn’t he know?

“I’m going to work,” she said incredulously. “I have to pay for this house and the food.”

“But… I can just take money for you,” he said. He tilted his head to the side, and really, he resembled an owl a bit too much. “Or kill whoever won’t give you money.”

“That’s… That’s not how I’m going to operate,” Naomi sighed. “What kind of people did you work for?”

“My last summoner was a woman who wanted me to kill her husband for the inheritance,” Beyond said brightly. “She wanted her son to inherit so she could keep control over the money.”

“I’m sorry I asked.”

He had a finger in his mouth again, and Naomi shuddered at how overgrown of a child he seemed to be. Everything about him was a bit too long for the rest of his body, it seemed, and his fingers were no exception.

“Isn’t that common?” Beyond asked next. “Don’t humans do that all the time?”

“No,” Naomi shot down. “At least, most don’t. The good ones don’t.”

He hummed like she’d just taught him something new before he tilted his head in the other direction. It made a horrific crack as it went, and Naomi flinched a bit at it.

“Do I need shoes, then?”

“What?” she sputtered. “Are you going out?”

“You said you go to work.” His brow furrowed up before he bit down on a nail. “Do I need shoes to go with you?”

“Oh,” she sighed. “You don’t come with me. You stay here. Seriously, have you never worked for someone who had a job before?”

“No, they were always wealthy and had no need,” he said back. “And I was last here about two hundred years ago. The times have changed.”

She blinked a few times very quickly before she picked her boot back up. “Well, I go to work.”

“What am I supposed to do all day then?” Beyond whined, and Naomi rolled her eyes. “Can’t I come?”

The thought of him having to stay alone in her house all day was a sufficiently scary enough one for her to consider it. She didn’t trust him at all, not when she’d known him maybe twenty-four hours and was still coming to terms with so much shit, and fuck, if she left him, she was going to come back to a burned down house, wasn’t she?

She groaned.

“You need shoes,” she mumbled. “Closed toe. And I’ll. Figure something out, I guess.”

She should’ve expected him to blink out of existence for a moment. What she didn’t expect was for him to return another second later with a pair of tennis shoes in his hand, and were those Adidas?

“Where…?”

“I stole them,” he said. “And I made sure they fit already.”

“You what?” God, she didn’t even have it in her to be angry anymore. He was way too much work. “You can’t just steal things.”

“Why not?”

“Christ, did you ever go outside?” Naomi whined. “Ever interact with humans?”

He went quiet, and Naomi turned to look at him and found him frowning at the floor. She was once again struck by the fact that he almost looked human for a moment before he shrugged.

“I was usually told to stay inside,” Beyond told her. “I wasn’t very good at shape shifting until recently, you see.”

She shouldn’t have gotten curious at that, but Naomi was always someone who was naturally very curious. It was part of why she was good at her job, and it constantly got her into trouble. Like by making her read a book and getting a paper cut and summoning a demon.

“Oh,” she mumbled. “Right. This isn’t your actual… You. So did I actually see your tail yesterday?”

“...I’m still fairly young,” he defended. Ah, he did have one, then. “Only a few millennia old.”

“I don’t know what that means,” she admitted. “Humans don’t work on millennia scales.”

“If you humans live to be approximately 90 at the most, and the oldest demon is… Quite old, currently,” he hummed as he quickly did math in his head, “then I would be about 27?”

It was ridiculous to feel upset that he was proportionately younger than her. She blamed it on her mother’s nagging phone calls that she wasn’t getting any younger and to try some new lotion and facial cream. At least, of course, when she wasn’t being nagged at to get married.

“Well, hurry up,” Naomi cut in. “I don’t want to be late to work. Human bosses don’t take kindly to that.”

He perked up and set to putting his shoes on, too.

~~

“Why is he here?” Halle groaned as they approached her. “I was hoping we’d hallucinated him.”

Beyond showed her his visitor’s badge proudly, taking delight in the roll of her eyes. “I’m a visitor, you see. I’m here to learn about the human workforce.”

“Is he for real?” Halle asked Naomi. “He wants to learn about us?”

“I couldn’t leave him at home,” Naomi told her. “He would’ve set my house on fire. I’ve already lost two curtains in twelve hours.”

Those hadn’t been intentional. Her house was filled with flammable things, and he liked putting his hands on them. Some hugely arsonist tendencies were part of his genetic makeup, and he sometimes accidentally set things on fire.

“I’ve been told I’m not allowed to ‘blink in and out of existence’ and to not talk to anyone else but you two,” he informed Halle. “I think Naomi’s just being mean.”

“I think she should be meaner,” Halle said. “Don’t touch anything either.”

“I already told him not to,” Naomi sighed. “I don’t want him to set any fires in here either.”

“I can control myself for a day.” Halle’s look said she suspected he couldn’t, and she was totally right, but he wasn’t going to tell her that. “I do have some amount of self-control.”

She gave him one last glare before she picked something up off her desk and passed it to Naomi. Naomi sighed and opened the manila folder before sighing again more heavily. Curious, Beyond looked over her shoulder and barked out a laugh.

“And you humans say demons are awful,” he snarked.

“I never once said that,” Naomi defended. “Humans are just as bad.”

It was truly stunning what humans were capable of doing to one another. The man’s head would’ve worked better as a bowl than anything with the way his face was concave and his eyes were not really anywhere to be found. Hell, he could’ve used a spoon to remove what little was left of the brain with the way he was, and he could’ve convincing labeled it a soup.

Beyond glanced up at Halle, who was frowning deeply at the pictures, her face a soft green. While he was impressed a bit that she wasn’t actively vomiting, she was being horrifically outdone by Naomi.

“Well, that’s interesting,” Naomi muttered.

She was definitely a more interesting summoner than his last one. His last one had sobbed when Beyond had slit her husband’s throat at her request.

Naomi was unflinchingly staring at half a head she hadn’t even caused with something at least related to fascination. Impressed wasn’t the exact word Beyond would’ve used for the situation, but he definitely felt a bit of wonder for it. How unexpected of a woman who sobbed so much the previous day that she’d nearly passed out.

“You’re a human who constantly works with death?” Beyond muttered to himself.

“He was found this morning,” Halle said, not having heard him. “In the middle of a field, of all things. Hopefully you’re fine with some hiking.”

“Something tells me I don’t have much of a choice,” Naomi grumbled. “Do you have any Claritin on you?”

“Yeah, I do, in the car.” Halle started grabbing various things off her desk before looking to Naomi. “Although, we probably have to leave him here. He’d fuck up our crime scene by touching everything.”

“Your words wound me,” he said with a fake pout. “Why would it matter if I touched anything? He’s dead already. He doesn’t need any of his things.”

“We’re able to use fingerprints to determine who was at a crime scene,” Naomi told him. “Or who touched something. It’s really important no one uses their bare hand to touch anything.”

“Oh! That’s fascinating,” Beyond gasped. “Although, I’m sorry to disappoint, but I don’t have fingerprints. They were burned off about three centuries ago, I’m afraid.”

He held his hands up for them to look, and both of them wandered in close to see. When they found what it was they were looking for, they both were frowning. Beyond wiggled his fingers at them mockingly, and Naomi smacked at his hand to make him stop.

“It’s weird that there’s no lines on his fingers,” Halle said with a shudder. “Like, it’s not just me, right?”

“I’m still giving you gloves,” Naomi said to him directly. “If you try to light anything up, you’ll just melt the gloves to your hands instead.”

“Like, it’s completely smooth like plastic,” Halle continued. “It’s like _House of Wax_ in here.”

“I’d like to not have to scrape off melted stuff from my hands,” Beyond agreed. “I suppose it might stop me from setting anything on fire.”

“What happened to your self control?” she challenged, and Beyond felt the laugh stumble out of him.

“Don’t put temptation in front of a demon, Naomi. We’re prone to taking it.”

“Like, that’s really not human, right?” Halle cut in. “Like it’d leave behind some form of scarring, right?”

For the first time in the day he’d been around her, Naomi actually smiled at him for a brief second. Thank god there was some humor in this woman, otherwise it’d be a painful fifty or sixty years.

“He’s like a mannequin,” Naomi confirmed for Halle. “And it’s weird.”

Halle nodded quickly and seemed glad that Naomi confirmed her suspicion that it was, in fact, odd that he didn’t have anything resembling identifying marks on his hands. She let her body untense before she moved around her desk and opened a drawer.

“I still don’t think we should bring him,” Halle said as she pulled out a box labeled Benadryl. She handed it to Naomi. “Also, I’m not sure if that’s even legal.”

“And what else am I going to do?” Naomi took a pink pill from the box and popped it into her mouth. “Leave him here?”

“Good point,” Halle groaned. “I guess he has to come.”

“Just don’t set any wildfires,” Naomi said to him. “We have enough of those as is.”

Just to be as irritating as possible, he shrugged his shoulders in a way that said he’d think about it. Halle started grumbling something about exorcising him, and Naomi looked at him so blandly that he had to smile at her. She raised a single eyebrow.

“No wildfires, got it,” he hummed. “But what about small campfires?”

Naomi turned away from him.

~~

Halle glared at him from the front seat angrily as he watched the world fly by out the window. He was sitting behind Naomi, and Halle kept a close watch on him out of the corner of her eye. What a fucking mess this all was, she thought, and God, how guilty she felt. How was she supposed to know that would actually summon a demon?

“This is it?” Naomi asked as they pulled into the parking lot of a park. “Jesus. That trail’s tiny.”

“Is that dead grass?” Beyond tossed out as Naomi parked. “I love dead grass.”

Naomi and Halle shared a look before they got out of the car and started walking towards the tiny entrance near the front of the park. Horror struck through her as she realized that the entire area was highly flammable and could go up at a moment’s notice.

“We’re keeping an eye on you,” she reminded Beyond. “Don’t fucking forget it.”

“I would never _intentionally_ cause a fire,” Beyond gasped. “I’d melt my gloves to my hands.”

Naomi seemed amused at that, but Halle felt dread trickle through her entire nervous system, starting from her head and seeping into every pore. To try to get some of it out, she stomped a bit harder than necessary as she started up the trail towards their dead guy.

After battling mosquitoes and too many spider webs for Halle to count, they saw the police in the distance and _oh._

_Oh god._

“I’m going to be sick,” Halle muttered as they got closer. “Oh holy shit.”

“Well, that’s unfortunate for him,” Naomi hummed.

“You scare me,” Beyond told Naomi bluntly.

It was so much worse to see it in person. The man was just a mess of what had once been a human, and Halle tried to keep her breakfast down. When they got to the edge of the police tape, Halle really was about to blow chunks, and Naomi turned to Beyond and put a hand up.

“Wait here,” she told him. “You’re not allowed in.”

“What?” Beyond whined. “Why not?”

“You’re not an agent,” Naomi informed him. “It takes special training to be one, that I know for a fact you don’t have.”

“Did anyone bring a paper bag of any kind?” Halle butted in. “This is insane.”

It might have been the smell that was worst of all. The hot California sun beat down on them, slow roasting what was left of this poor dude. In an attempt to grab onto anything to keep her nausea down, Halle noted that the man at least still had his Yeezy’s.

“Fine,” Beyond sighed. “I guess I’ll just poke around over here, then.”

Neither Halle nor Naomi trusted that, but they let it drop for the moment. They had other things to worry about as they approached the body, and Halle flinched at seeing it in all its glory. What a way to go.

“What all do we know?” Naomi asked one of the on scene police officers. He shrugged a bit.

“He was found by a bird watcher this morning, who came over when he saw some vultures,” he told them. “Guy didn’t have his wallet or anything, too. We called you all in just because of how violent this was.”

“Is the bird watcher still here?” Naomi asked, but the officer shook his head.

“We took him back to the station. He didn’t want to stay out here.”

“Reasonable,” Halle agreed. “The perp must’ve hated our guy.”

“He’s missing a lot…” Naomi started mumbling. Ah, here it was. Halle moved out of her way, and let her go into full mumble. “Missing his face, his eyes… Why keep eyes? What is he supposed to see? Why take so much from him…?”

Halle looked over towards Beyond and felt the bile rise up again as he disgustingly watched Naomi, head tilted to the side and a weird hunch to his shoulders. Not that he wasn’t always hunched, but this one was as if he was listening to them.

Right. He’s a demon. He probably could hear them, huh?

“He’s missing a wedding ring,” Halle tuned in just in time for. “And a watch. Those are trackable objects. Let’s see who has reported a missing spouse recently.”

“Hey, Naomi,” Beyond called out to her. They both looked at him. “Where’s all the blood?”

There wasn’t any. The grass wasn’t stained, and the ground didn’t look like clay, and Halle decided she didn’t want to know how Beyond knew that from so far away. He could probably smell it or something equally creepy, and Halle discarded it from her mind.

“He was carried here,” Halle confirmed. “So the perp’s strong. There’s no drag marks, either.”

“Great, sounds great,” Naomi muttered. “When we find this guy, let’s remember to bring our guns, okay?”

Satisfied with that, they turned to the officer and began to speak with him about getting an autopsy as well as speaking to anyone in the area. It was as they were just finishing up that an officer started yelling.

“Hey!” he yelled. “Sir! Stop that!”

Neither one of them was shocked as Beyond held up some burning grass.


	4. One Missed Call

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Human technology is quite the marvel. He remembers when it could barely do anything, could barely even talk to one another if they lived too far away, and now they could talk in an instant. Cell phones are exciting, and fascinating, and cameras...!

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Oof. I'm so sorry, y'all, but I have to take next week off from posting as well. The busiest two weeks at my job started this week, and I'm going to be totally swamped and dead inside. I'm really sorry!!! I'll be back to posting after that!

As twilight fell over her kitchen, he perked up when she opened the freezer before scrunching up his face when she pulled out some chocolate ice cream. Over the past few days, Beyond had learned that food was stored in the fridge, and that it could be heated up to be eaten, but to Naomi’s amusement, a trend had appeared towards anything that was to be eaten cold.

“Did you want some?” she offered.

“No, you fiend,” he hissed. “Keep your ice thing away from me.”

“Your loss,” she chuckled.

Apparently, demons, or perhaps specifically fire demons, could not stand cold foods. He watched her from his spot beside her for a long moment before frowning at her smug look, and he blinked away into one of her chairs, his knees pulled to his chest. She followed after him with a quick look at the newest burn mark to add to her collection.

“Why would anyone enjoy cold things,” he muttered, “when you could put them in the microwave and heat them up?”

“Humans aren’t fire demons,” she snickered a bit. “We like a bit of hot and cold.”

“You already have water,” he pouted. “That’s cool enough.”

With another blink, he was digging through her cabinets before pulling out some bread. Another blink, and he was at the toaster, excitedly dropping the pieces in and watching the toaster heat up. The impression that his tail was flicking back and forth took root in her mind and wouldn’t leave.

“Could you not blink all over my house?” Naomi asked. “I already have to replace most of my carpeting. Don’t add the tile onto it..”

“Walking is so inefficient,” he said without looking away. “And I can’t ‘blink’ when we’re outside.”

His toast popped up, and for a shimmer of a second, Naomi saw that tail stick straight up in slight alarm, before it disappeared again. He hummed, or growled, she wasn’t sure which, before he plucked the toast out and shoved a piece into his mouth. It made her wonder at what his demon side looked like.

“Just get rid of the carpeting,” he continued, “and put in something more resistant.”

“That’s expensive, Beyond,” Naomi sighed out. “I’m already barely paying my mortgage.”

“Then I’ll kill whoever you owe the mortgage to, and you can get something better put in,” Beyond offered. “Right?”

“No, no murder.”

Actually, if she looked really hard, she could sometimes make out the edges of Beyond’s more demon parts. The edges of his irises were always a red, even if the rest was grey, and his fingers seemed unnaturally long. Sometimes, she could see his hair fall in an odd way, and she could make out the base of what she’s sure were horns.

“Humans are so weird about murder,” Beyond whined. “Human lives aren’t worth that much, y’know. You even have an entire job around stopping it.”

“A job you seem to enjoy, so don’t start this again,” Naomi shot back. “And I’m leaving you here tomorrow after the shit you pulled today.”

Beyond sniffled dramatically as he got up and walked over to the cabinet again, other piece of toast in hand. “You finally trust me. I’m so proud.”

“You set a tree on fire,” Naomi reminded him. “And nearly got an officer killed.”

“But did he die?” Naomi rolled her eyes at the demon, and he scarfed down his other piece of toast all in one go. Naomi cringed. “He didn’t, so I’m in the clear.”

“That’s not how that works, like at all.”

“Just tell me what happens,” he waved off. He pulled her bread out, or at least the first loaf of four Naomi had bought after she realized he even liked it. “I want to know what the… What was it called again?”

“The autopsy.”

“Yes! The autopsy says. He smelled a bit like belladonna, which has me curious.”

Naomi blinked rapidly before looking at him sharply. “And you’re only just saying this now because…?”

He shrugged. “I assumed you could smell it.”

Once again, he dropped another piece of bread into the toaster and watched it heat up. This time, however, Naomi was too busy trying to figure out her life to look out for any demonic traits besides his personality. She still hadn’t ever really been able to process his presence in her life, even now, but luckily for them both, she was good at adapting.

“Well, I couldn’t,” she grumbled. “You should’ve said something while we were out in those fields for hours.”

She had some nasty sunburns from looking in the area for so long. Of course, they found nothing and no one in the neighboring houses saw anything, but apparently, Beyond could smell something from the start. She wondered at what the autopsy would say.

Beyond walked back over with some of Naomi’s jam and started spreading it onto his bread like Naomi had taught him, except a hell of a lot messier. It made Naomi sigh internally. “What am I supposed to do while you’re gone tomorrow?”

“What?” Naomi groaned. “I don’t know. Watch TV. Paint. I don’t care.”

“TV?” Beyond asked, and Naomi waved her hand.

“The television. It’s a shortened way of saying it.”

“Oh!” Beyond took a bit of his toast, and Christ, that was too much jam. It spilled off his toast and onto his hand. “The flat thing in the living room, right? That has pictures?”

“Yeah, that,” Naomi tried to keep her disgust to a minimum. “Just watch that for a day. And no fires.”

“But what if I need help?” Beyond continued on dramatically. “What if I’ve fallen and broken my hip?”

“...You’ll be fine.” Oh no, she hesitated. She practically watched Beyond take the hesitation and run with it.

“What if I get just too bored and decide to do away with the curtains and the walls along with them?” he pressed. “Or if I finally get rid of that hideous thing you call a carpet?”

A hundred scenarios went through her head about all the things he could cause and all the ways he would hide them if she didn’t give him a way to contact her. Damn him. Damn him to fucking hell. She knew what she had to do.

“It’s a necessary expense,” she told herself.

And the worst part of it all was she knew, deep down, that it was.

~~

Cell phones, it turned out, were amazing little devices, and Beyond tapped around happily on his little one that smelled like styrofoam. He was most curious about these app things, and Naomi, after spending quite a long time showing him how to use it, flopped onto her side not too far away, finally relaxing.

“You get it, right?” Naomi asked. “Do you need me to explain anything again?”

“No,” Beyond hummed. “I have it now.”

“Remember to only text me. Unless the house is burning down, then you can call me.”

“Okay,” Beyond continued to hum. Naomi sighed from beside him, and he knew she didn’t believe him, even if she should. Phone calls were weird, and he didn’t much like them. “You humans made something pretty impressive.”

“That’s not even that good of a phone,” Naomi chuckled a bit. “You’ll get a better one eventually.”

“I’m excited,” he said honestly. That got him a little more chuckling, but he ignored it in favor of tapping around and changing the settings like Naomi showed him. “I wonder what a better phone can do.”

“Yours is just a few generations behind,” she said, as if he knew what that meant. “So really your camera just sucks a bit.”

“Cameras get even _better_?” Beyond gasped. “That’s incredible. I have to applaud humanity.”

He was rewarded with some actual laughter as Naomi apparently found something funny about what he’d said. Instead of being insulted, though, he found himself starting to have a few little bits of laughter slip out as well, and perhaps it was at the absurdity of the situation?

“I’m not sure how to feel about humanity being praised by a demon,” Naomi admitted. “But thanks.”

“One day you’ll remember that demon isn’t an accurate word,” he huffed back. “Unless you’re just being spiteful, you fiend.”

“Am I?” Naomi played dumb. “I had no idea.”

“At least my other summoners were just arrogant,” he continued on dramatically. “You’re something else.”

He was just trying to tease her, as he normally did, but the realization hit him that she really was a bit different. She spoke to him like he was a person, for lack of a better word, which he chalked up to him finally having the human form down. He probably should’ve learned to shape-shift years ago.

“Am I?” she said again. “From what I’ve heard, that’s a good thing.”

“No, you’re worse,” he told her. “You choose to be cruel. The others were just cruel because they were destined to be assholes.”

“Oh, do I choose to be mean?” Humans could be aggravating when they wanted to be. This was a certainty. “I had no idea.”

He let the subject fall silent as he tapped around on his phone, trying to get acquainted with all of its features. This internet thing looked particularly exciting, and Naomi had said it could connect to most places in the world. He wanted to be able to annoy people everywhere, as much as was possible.

“Hey, Beyond,” Naomi cut in to his messing around. “Look up.”

He looked up, before he jumped when the camera flashed at him. Naomi started snickering as he tried to pull himself together.

“Wow, that’s a creepy picture,” Naomi laughed out. “Your eyes went totally red.”

The picture itself caught the moment right after the flash frightened him, bits and pieces of his human form shifted away in blurry parts, and yes, it was a creepy picture. Naomi didn’t seem to react to it at all, confusingly, and she openly started wondering if she should send it to Halle.

“Warn me,” he hissed. “And don’t show it to that witch.”

“I’m never going to warn you,” Naomi ironically warned. “And it’s too late, I already sent it.”

And he watched her set it as his photo in her phone.

~~

“What does a demon even snap?” Halle asked as Naomi looked at her phone for the third time in ten minutes. “The ways he’s tormenting your neighbors?”

Beyond had discovered Snapchat within the few hours she’d been at work. Considering his excitement over phone cameras, and cameras in general, Naomi wasn’t exactly shocked. In fact, she was shocked he hadn’t discovered it sooner.

“Mostly plants, actually,” Naomi said. “And occasionally the dog next door that I think he’s trying to steal.”

“Cookie?” Halle hummed. “Or Jasper?”

“Cookie,” Naomi confirmed. “I think he likes rottweilers.”

Her phone popped up that she had another Snapchat notification. She ignored it for the moment.

“A demon likes dogs,” Halle sighed. “Who would’ve known?”

“I’m just glad he’s too busy with this to do anything else,” Naomi said as she leaned back in her chair. “It’s nice not having my house burn down.”

“I agree, but damn, he’s annoying.” Naomi’s phone buzzed, a text coming in that relayed how bored Beyond was. “He keeps blowing up your phone.”

“I tried explaining that phrase to him,” Naomi muttered. “And boy, did that take a while.”

“Yikes.”

That had been that morning’s conversation as Naomi was trying to get ready for work. Beyond had this habit of attempting to talk to her at all times, since he seemed to always be bored. She supposed that years and years and years of doing almost nothing would do that to anyone, though, so it didn’t bug her too much.

Except for when she was trying to fucking shower.

“Well, at least you can leave him at home now,” Halle said. “You can… Not trust him, but there isn’t really any other way to put it.”

“He seemed pretty interested in human work, though,” Naomi hedged. “I might let him come like once a week.”

“I don’t have a desk anymore.”

“But no one got hurt,” Naomi waved off. “Besides, he’s getting better at impulse control.”

“He laughed when they couldn’t put the fire out at first,” Halle continued.

“It was a little funny finding out your desk was so old it had that flammable of a varnish on it,” Naomi defended again.

“Oh no,” Halle gasped. “No, Naomi, don’t be his friend.”

“Halle,” Naomi said with an eye roll. “I have to deal with him. For life. Hell, probably even the afterlife. I’m just trying to see his side of things.”

“He’s a demon! And we should be trying to get him exorcised!” Halle covered her face with her hand. “I think we should call a priest.”

“And I think that it won’t do anything,” Naomi said bluntly. “I signed the contract. That’s it. My soul is forfeit. I don’t think an exorcism is going to save my soul. And really, Halle, he’s not that bad. He’s more annoying than anything else.”

“Say that to me again after your house is gone,” Halle grumbled.

“Whatever, what does the autopsy say again?”

Halle narrowed her eyes at Naomi a bit but let the subject drop. The desk they were sharing was much too small to hold all of their paperwork, but Halle wasn’t getting her new desk for several days. She dug around a bit before she pulled the folder out.

“He was poisoned, that’s for sure,” Halle told her. “He was dead before his brains were bashed in.”

“Man, he really wasn’t liked,” Naomi sighed. “Did they say by what?”

“Toxicology says it’s probably belladonna. But here’s a weird fact… Time of death? About three weeks ago.”

That caught her attention. Naomi thought for a brief moment of the amateur toxicologist she had at home, still angry that he’d said nothing, but also intrigued. The guy hadn’t looked so dead.

“Beyond could smell it on him, the belladonna” Naomi told Halle in an attempt to stabilize herself. “He told me that last night.”

“He disgusts me,” Halle said back. “And seriously? He could? That’s just… Eugh.”

“Why poison someone to death but then so violently abuse the body?”

“Oh, so we’re ignoring how gross he is? Okay.”

“He’s dead already, so why turn him to pulp?” Naomi tilted her head a bit. “I mean, there’s no point other than just senseless violence.”

“It’s a pretty intense hatred,” Halle agreed. “This guy must have been an asshole.”

“I was looking through missing people reports, but there’s no leads yet. Either his vacation away wasn’t going well, or he’s newly divorced.” Naomi tapped her finger against her lips. “So, yeah, he wasn’t really cared about.”

“Great,” Halle grumbled. “That’s just what we needed. And we haven’t heard of anyone trying to sell a watch or a men’s wedding ring recently. We’ve got nothing.”

“We can see if anyone bought belladonna recently,” Naomi tried. “I mean, I can’t imagine that’s popular.”

“Yeah, and I think we should take a look at the body again, now that it’s cleaned up a bit more.”

An idea came to Naomi, but she knew Halle would never like it. It seemed that it didn’t matter, though, because Halle narrowed her eyes at Naomi.

“You have an idea of some kind that I won’t like,” she accused.

“I mean, there are things we probably can’t see or realize about the body,” Naomi started. “Not with our weak senses.”

Halle blinked rapidly before her eyebrows came low over her eyes. “There’s no way we can do that.”

“It wouldn’t be that hard,” Naomi said. “And Beyond could probably tell us a lot...”

“We’re only down to one desk!” Halle interjected. “We need at _least_ one.”

“But the rewards outweigh the risks. And look! See, my house isn’t on fire. He can control himself a bit.”

“Naomi, that’s a picture of your cactus plant on fire. He didn’t even say sorry. All it says is ‘whoops.’”

“But it’s not the house!” Naomi pushed. “And we really need something more to go off of than we have. We don’t even know who the guy is.”

“I can’t believe he’s being praised for not burning down your house,” Halle groaned. The set to her shoulders drooped forwards, and Naomi tried to not smile at her as Halle made her decision. “Look. Fine. But he needs to set zero fires or else I’m taking a knife to him, okay?”

Naomi laughed at that and held her phone a little bit better to start texting. “You set such high standards for him, Halle.”

“You’re just too lax.”

Naomi couldn’t really argue with that.


	5. Shutter Island

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The morgue is not the friendliest of places. Everyone knows this and tries to respectfully pay their respects... Except for one idiot who doesn't understand human rules. Halle is going to end him, and soon, and Naomi just wants to get some viable leads for this fucking thing. Seriously, why is everything so hard with these people?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So I'm still going to be super overworked for like... The next month or so? Which really, really sucks but. Well. I'm going to be posting as often as I can, but that might mean the chapters take me a bit longer than usual, I'm really sorry. I suspect I'll be on a one and a half week basis for at least the next two chapters! Sorry, y'all. But don't worry, there won't be a hiatus!

Beyond was practically bouncing up and down by the time they’d gotten him down to the morgue. He’d promised a grand total of four times to set no fires in the building, and this time, Naomi somewhat believed him, if only because of how near murder Halle seemed. She kept fiddling with her pen in a way that said Beyond wouldn’t have eyeballs anymore if he misstepped, and it seemed to actually be working at keeping him somewhat in check.

“How lovely it is to be back here,” Beyond hummed as they walked. “Don’t you agree, Halle?”

Well, she only said somewhat.

He was much too excited, overall, for the dead body. It was disturbing in an inhuman sort of a way, and Naomi tried to mostly just drown him out. He really loved reminding her of just how awful he could be sometimes.

“Beyond,” Naomi warned as they waited for the coroner. “I don’t recommend that.”

“He doesn’t need both eyeballs, right?” Halle asked. “Or both testicles?”

“Ladies, ladies,” Beyond tried to soothe. “I’m just kidding. It’s just… I was _dying_ to be here!”

Halle and Naomi groaned as Beyond cackled like a witch does in old movies. Naomi tried and failed to not roll her eyes.

“Only Stephen can pull off puns,” Naomi groaned. “Not you.”

“Loud’s attractive enough,” Halle added. “You’re not.”

“Jesus,” Beyond gasped. “That hurt my feelings. I think you need to apologize.”

“Over my dead body,” Halle shot back.

“I’ll wait ‘til the dead guy is here, then. But I expect an apology as soon as he is.”

“Children,” Naomi muttered. “You two are children.”

The coroner wheeled in the shoddy cart slowly, clearly not wanting to be around the three of them. Specifically, Naomi suspected he didn’t want to be around Beyond with the way he kept looking at him, but she thought Halle was also a possibility as she kept eyeing the scalpel on the table.

“Ms. Misora?” he said as he approached. “Here he is.”

“It’s detective,” Naomi corrected him like she always had to. The man was elderly, though, so she doubted that habit was changing any time soon. “Thank you.”

“You know the usual rules,” he said. “I’ll be in the other room.”

“Thanks,” Naomi said again before he shambled off.

It wasn’t quite as awful to see him as last time. He wasn’t quite such a mess, and he resembled something vaguely human in the facial region once more. The bits and pieces that had come off were to the side, displayed for them to see if they wanted to.

“Everyone have their gloves?” Naomi asked.

“Why yes indeed, Ms. Misora,” Beyond chipped in. Naomi scowled at him. “I’m ready.”

“Don’t ever call me Ms. Misora,” Naomi snapped back. “Just stick with Naomi, or I’ll let Halle remove your eyes.”

“Oh, so I _can_ remove his eyeballs?” Halle asked excitedly. “Please say yes.”

“Shh,” Beyond shushed them. “I’m working.”

Naomi had to ignore the smug smirk on the demon’s face for her own sanity. He may not have been awful, but he always found new and better ways to test her patience with every passing second. A lifetime of him was going to be a nightmare.

Beyond poked and prodded at the body for a bit before frowning and tilting his head to the side frowning, his finger coming up to his mouth again. She and halle both cringed at the thought of the germs he must have on that glove.

“Well, that’s odd,” he muttered. “Very odd.”

“What is it?” Halle asked. “Did you notice something?”

“Yes,” Beyond said. “I noticed you didn’t apologize to me.”

Naomi smacked the back of Beyond’s head, and he shot her a look that she responded to with her own angry one.

“Fine,” he huffed. “The guy. He’s like… Weirdly well preserved.”

Halle and Naomi both awkwardly shifted, before Naomi cleared her throat.

“What?”

“Well, he’s like… Gooey still,” Beyond said with a shrug. “But all I smell now is… oil?”

“We preserve him,” Naomi coughed out. “For investigative purposes so I mean-”

“No, no, not like that,” Beyond shook off. “Like I mean. It’s creepy. Even I don’t like it.”

Naomi tilted her head and brought her own hand to her mouth. Beside her, Halle visibly cringed again.

“Do you mean formaldehyde?” Naomi asked. “But that would’ve come up.”

“No.” Beyond shook his head. “It’s weird that I don’t smell anything but oil. The guy smells like he’s wearing perfume of it. Neither of you can smell that?”

He smelled like a dead guy to them. Naomi shrugged a bit helplessly before Beyond tilted his head a bit more, the angle of his neck something not quite normal or natural.

“He just smells dead,” Naomi said.

“And for a while, too,” Halle added.

“Underneath that, though.” Beyond scrunched his nose. “He smells like someone dunked him in oil. I hadn’t noticed that before.”

“Maybe him being cleaned up is why?” Naomi offered. “Maybe you couldn’t smell it over the field?”

“Probably,” Beyond shrugged. “Plus I know belladonna pretty well. A flowery but bitter scent in a field of dead grass just stands out.”

“I don’t wanna know why you know belladonna,” Halle pitched in with a whine. “Don’t tell us.”

“I had a summoner who was fond of it, even grew them in a room in his house,” Beyond decided to tell them. “He went through four wives before one of the fathers found out.”

Humans really were disgusting, Naomi thought. She swallowed heavily.

“But oil, y’know,” Beyond continued, “is used in a lot of things. I can name ten rituals off the top of my head that all include oil.”

“Oil never came up in the autopsy, though,” Naomi said. “Just the belladonna.”

“Someone tried to wash this oil off,” Beyond waved off. “Trust me. Otherwise, I would’ve noticed it sooner.”

She and Halle both took a moment to mull it over before Beyond started poking and prodding the guy again. He lifted up the man’s left hand before frowning.

“Are wedding rings ever made of silver?” he asked suddenly. “Or laced with silver in any way?”

“They can be?” Halle stumbled out. “Why?”

“Your eyes wouldn’t be able to see it, but there’s a scar here. A burn scar, along this tan, in the shape of a ring.”

The autopsy hadn’t even caught such a thing, and neither could see it. That didn’t stop Halle and Naomi from crowding in to attempt to, even if Beyond looked at them like they were nuts.

“So you immediately jumped to silver?” Halle sighed. “What if he just had an accident as a kid?”

“You think this isn’t natural,” Naomi filled in. His normally wide eyes somehow got even wider when he looked at her, and she met his gaze. “You think something _else_ is involved.”

“Yes.” Beyond said bluntly. Naomi tilted her head again in interest at him as Beyond continued to stare at her. “I think this guy was reanimated. Must’ve been killed by the belladonna. Someone brought him back, but then they decided they didn’t like him. So wham! Take out the head, he goes back to being dead.”

Long silence fell over them all but he didn’t look away. Icy dread was filling Naomi up quickly, the part of her just as superstitious as her grandmother believing him and her detective mind not. How ridiculous! How horribly plausible given Beyond’s existence!

“And we’re done here,” Halle cut off. “Thanks for all your non-help, Beyond.”

“What?” Beyond’s eyebrows pulled together and finally, he released Naomi to look at Halle. Something raced through her and ate away at her limbs. “He shows all the signs of it. I’m not trying to be funny.”

“What a great laugh,” Halle said back. “And what exactly does that mean? We have a murderer and a resurrecting person? Jesus, what bullshit.”

“Reanimating. And I don’t have any reason to lie,” Beyond tried again. Something oddly like desperation seemed to seep into his face, and Naomi watched the being blink something back. “I’m actually trying to help.”

“Yeah, but resurrection?” Halle snorted. “That’s a bit much, isn’t it?”

Beyond’s mouth went taught and tight, as did his shoulders. It was unusual, and strange, and Naomi found herself stepping in.

“And we have a demon,” Naomi reminded her, but not unkindly. Halle looked to the side as her own mouth tensed into a line. “I’m willing to at least consider it.”

Beyond wasn’t grateful. That wasn’t the right word in the slightest, but it was the first that came to Naomi’s mind at the look in his eyes. But when she blinked, it was gone, and instead Beyond looked like his usual self.

“Ms. Misora!” Beyond exclaimed. “A woman after my own heart. You see the truth to my words.”

“I said not to call me that,” Naomi told him off. “And I’m just acknowledging that there’s a lot I don’t know, in this world, but that you do. I didn’t think dem- no, whatever you are were real until recently and I was wrong. So… We should at least look into it.”

Beyond’s smile fell into something more open mouthed before he blinked rapidly a few times. He opened his mouth to speak, but he was interrupted.

“Sorry everyone,” the coroner said as he walked towards them. “I have another body coming in, and I need the space. I hope you understand.”

The moment shattered, like glass. Whatever honest emotion she’d been seeing scurried away again, Beyond and Halle both tossing up masks. Naomi frowned slightly at them.

“Of course,” Naomi told him. “We’ll clear out.”

The man smiled warmly, and he followed them a little ways towards the door. “Thank you, Ms. Misora.”

They were about to leave, when Naomi heard something she almost didn’t believe, something she almost couldn’t fathom.

“She told you it’s _detective_ , old man,” Beyond growled lowly, something in it inhuman. “I suggest you remember that.”

She forced herself to not look back at Beyond.

~~

How was he supposed to react to that?

No one ever takes him seriously!

For the first time in all too many years, he was at a loss for words as they all crowded around the tiny desk. If only Analise could’ve seen him now, she would’ve laughed at him and told him how silly he was being. Hell, maybe her spirit was somewhere around him, roaring with laughter at how stuck he was over Naomi just fucking listening to him.

It was pathetic, totally fucking pathetic, and yet Beyond didn't know if he was supposed to thank her or not. Should he? Would Naomi take his gratitude seriously, or had that been a one time thing? 

No, no... Naomi always took him a bit seriously. She always did. So was he supposed to say thank you?

“I miss my desk,” Halle cut his thoughts off as she groaned. “This is way too cramped.”

“I miss your desk, too,” he told her. “It was such a beautiful wood.”

The pen bounced off the side of his face and fell to the floor with no fanfare. Halle didn’t even bother to retrieve it.

“Would you be able to identify a specific breed of belladonna?” Naomi said as she turned to Beyond. “I feel like that would narrow this down a lot.”

Analise, for all her good qualities, had never taken him seriously. She’d never taken anything seriously- not her family, not her friends, not even her life. She’d laugh when he talked and tell him to lighten up, but Naomi was looking to him for knowledge. She didn't laugh when he talked, and _God, he was so pathetic_.

He couldn't believe she'd invited him back.

“Ah,” he attempted. “I don’t… Wow, Naomi, did you just call it a breed?”

She frowned at him before sighing out through her nose. He almost wanted to wince for some reason, but he stopped himself.

“Flowers can have breeds,” Naomi said. “Right?”

“I think so,” Halle agreed. “That’s a thing, I think.”

“Well pardon me, I didn’t realize you two were botanists,” Beyond huffed. “I didn’t know that was the terminology they used anymore.”

Halle threw another pen at him, and it joined its twin on the floor, lost to them all forever. There was no way he was going to get it for her, and she’d made it clear she wouldn’t get it. Maybe the stalemate would be broken by Naomi, and he looked to her to see if she’d react.

Nope. She looked annoyed, in that politely quiet way of hers, her eyes narrowed until a tiny crease formed between her eyebrows. He found he didn’t like it.

“What?” he asked. “She threw it.”

“Wow,” Halle grumbled. “Real fucking mature.”

“Oh boy,” Naomi sighed out. “We need more space.”

The desk itself was just a mess of paperwork and various office supplies, all with Halle and Naomi’s laptops neatly stacked on top. The computer Beyond had been shown when he first was there must have been buried somewhere, and he felt kind of bad for Naomi. He thought about burning some of the paperwork away for her, but he figured in the end that she’d kill him for it.

“You’d be shocked at how many places sell belladonna,” Naomi told Halle heavily. “Apparently, that’s another stupid thing we can thank Los Angeles for.”

“Yeah, and searching up ‘resurrection spells’ on Google gives you some weird results.”

“It’s reanimation,” Beyond reminded them again. “Resurrection and reanimation are very different things.”

“I still can’t believe we’re following this train of thought,” Halle groaned. “This just feels insane to me.”

Naomi didn’t respond to that, and Beyond decided he didn’t have to either. Halle got to drown in the silence she’d created, and they weren’t going to save her.

The silence fell over them all for a good long while as Halle and Naomi got more and more sucked into their work once more, and Beyond played around with his phone. Slowly, his mind started to practically itch from the boredom, and his hands nearly itched from wanting to set something on fire. The papers on the table were calling to him, he swore.

He peeked at the other two to see if he could potentially get away with setting some of them on fire, but his plans were foiled as soon as he looked up. Jesus fuck, did the woman have psychic powers?

Naomi shook her head at him, slowly, and he grumbled something at her before deciding to just go back to the internet.


	6. Raw

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The magic of restaurants is that they bring you food, piping hot, and you don't have to do a thing. Beyond is learning that with all the excitement of a puppy, and Naomi, the poor woman, has to deal with him. Halle just hopes they didn't go to one of her favorite places, though...

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It's been such a busy week, holy fuck... I've been running around doing so much at my job that I just kind of crash when I get home. But I'm trying to stay on my writing schedule! Hopefully I can make it! I just have to finish out the school year, ahaha. Thank you for reading!

Restaurants were the true pinnacle of human invention. Forget anything about cameras, cell phones, or the internet; being served piping hot food that you didn’t have to make yourself was the true height of humanity, and Beyond, for one, adored it with every fiber of his being.

The pictures on the menu made his stomach growl despite not needing to eat food, and the descriptions made his mouth water. How glad he was that Americans liked beef!

“I want all three of these burgers,” Beyond said bluntly. “Without that disgusting lettuce.”

“Jesus fuck,” Naomi sighed as the waiter continued to stare at them. “Just pick one, Beyond.”

He growled at her lowly before bouncing his head back and forth a bit. He tilted his head and looked to the horrified teen beside them. “And which one would you recommend?”

“W-what?” he stumbled out. “I, um. I like the first two, sir.”

“Great! I’ll have the third one then.”

Naomi put a hand against her forehead and covered her face as the kid’s expression somehow crumbled further. Beyond made sure to tilt his head an extra little bit and smile at him, and the kid jumped into the air at it. It served to make Naomi sigh extra loudly once more, and Beyond felt successful.

“And for you, ma’am?” the kid rushed out.

“Just a knife to stab him with,” Naomi grumbled. Beyond turned his smile to her and held her glare. “And chicken tenders. Dear God bring me a lot of barbeque sauce.”

The kid practically ran for it as soon as he could. Naomi didn’t even spare him a glance as she glared at Beyond as ruthlessly as she could, which was somewhat impressive. If he were being honest, Naomi was always a bit impressive, but that moment reminded him of it the most.

“Why are you like this?” Naomi asked him. “I can’t afford buying you three meals every fucking time.”

“It’s my fiery personality,” Beyond said. “I’ve got a burning passion for mischief.”

“And I’ve got a burning passion about being able to come back here again in the future.”

“Harsh, Naomi,” he pouted. “And I had assumed you were sweet and kind.”

“I’m a Grade A fiend,” Naomi huffed back. “Don’t make me force a cold drink on you.”

He snapped his mouth closed at her threat, and he sat quietly and like a good boy. He even folded his hands on the table like he’d seen in TV shows, where the little children sat at desks in a room listening to the adult blather on about something. Hmm, how does someone get a job as an adult telling kids things? He could turn them all into little misfits.

“You’re not a student,” she pleaded. “Don’t do that.”

“Oh! So that’s a school, then? How do I become a teacher?”

“You have to have gone to school,” she told him. “And college.”

“Hmph, I think I know more than your college graduates,” he said. “Especially since I lived most of it.”

“You haven’t been on Earth in two hundred years,” she scoffed. “You’ve hardly lived most of it.”

“I have lived through and committed most forms of murder, though, so I think I’m qualified.”

“Jesus fucking Christ.” She rubbed her temples absently, her eyes shut tightly. “No one teaches children about that sort of thing.”

“What? You’re all so weak.”

The corners of her eyes crinkled in that way he’d been noticing as of late. Naomi said it was colloquially known as “crow’s feet” and that all humans eventually got them, but she’d smacked the back of his head when he told her that he just called them wrinkles.

His previous summoners had had them, of course, but they weren’t quite like Naomi’s. Hers curved upwards towards the middle, instead of just going outwards, and when she’d narrow her eyes, it just didn’t seem to quite fit the natural curve.

When she smiled politely at the waiter, though, it did.

He left their drinks quietly and escaped just as quietly, and Beyond blinked to himself as Naomi’s smile fell and her eyes smoothed out.

“Are you even going to drink that?” she asked him suspiciously. “Or is this more of a fitting in thing?”

“I’m not touching this shit,” he said proudly. “But I remembered to order it!”

Coffee was the only warm drink they’d had on their menu, and there was no way in hell he was going to even have cold fucking water near himself. Naomi reached across the table and pulled it towards herself, seemingly content with how warm it was.

“You might like coffee, actually,” Naomi said as she took a sip of it. “It’s full of caffeine.”

“It’s also made of water,” Beyond spat back. “Like, as the main substance. You can have it.”

She was way ahead of him. She was humming softly as she drank it, her water sitting forgotten in front of her. He found himself smiling despite himself.

“You’re just a coward, got it,” Naomi hummed. “A chicken. What’s the other phrase? Lily livered or something?”

“I call you a fiend for a reason, you fiend. Hand me the fucking cup.”

“Wow,” Naomi giggled. He took the cup from her but didn’t look away from her face, and it made her start laughing a bit harder. “Here. Have at it.”

At least it was warm, he told himself. It was warm, and the rim had bits of Naomi’s chapstick on it, he noted for no good reason he could come up with, so he put it to his own lips and chugged the fucker.

It was bitter, and foul, and absolutely horrid, and he hated the cold rush through his esophagus, but damnit if he didn’t try pretend it had no effect. From the way Naomi nearly spat out her water, he must have failed.

“Hmm,” he coughed out as he pulled the cup away. “I enjoyed that. Really.”

“Oh my _God_ ,” Naomi was laughing. “You look so _disgusted_!”

“That wouldn’t be the word I’d use, but sure.”

He blinked rapidly as Naomi, calm and cool Naomi, broke down into peals of laughter, that were interrupted every few ‘ha’s to snort.

He’d never seen her really laugh before, he realized then with great clarity. And it really came as no wonder; she had such an ugly laugh. The harder she laughed, the more often she’d snort, and Beyond was trying to not laugh at her.

“I wish I had gotten that on camera,” she gasped out. “Halle would have loved that.”

“Of course she would’ve,” he sniffed. “You humans created this death sludge as a torture device, right?”

“ _Death sludge_!”

She was snorting more than laughing, at this point, and he couldn’t help it anymore. Laughing with her was the only thing he could do, or so it seemed, as she dominated the sound in the entire restaurant with her laughter. Other patrons were looking over warily as Naomi continued to snort herself to near tears over it all.

“How dare you take so much pleasure in my pain,” Beyond wheezed out.

Naomi wasn’t exactly able to respond, but he didn’t mind.

Hell, he almost didn’t even mind when she spilled her water all over the table, just a moment later, from laughing so hard.

~~

She glared at him firmly, her mouth twitching downward as he smugly smiled back, and tapped her foot rapidly on the tile beneath them. The desk, the beautiful, wonderful desk, was the only thing keeping her from launching herself at him and tearing him to shreds, but the bastard knew it. It was goddamn infuriating.

“Beyond,” Halle warned. “Step away from my desk.”

“But it’s so nice and spacious,” Beyond hummed. “I’m really quite attached to it.”

“I won’t hesitate to stab you with the nearest silver thing,” Halle continued. “And I’ll make sure no one finds your body.”

“Yes, but will that give you your desk back?” Beyond asked. “Because if you try anything, this desk is going bye-bye.”

He had his hand flat against its surface, the new and pretty varnish on it begging her to save it. Her brand new desk was so wonderful, and she ran through how to negotiate a hostage situation in her head.

“What is it that you want?” Halle asked. “Maybe I can get it for you.”

“I already have it,” Beyond said with a click of his tongue. “And I’ve read some of Naomi’s handbooks. This isn’t a hostage situation; it’s a ticking time bomb.”

The hairs on the back of Halle’s neck practically stood up straight into the air as he smiled at her even more. She swallowed quickly.

“You wouldn’t dare.”

“Wouldn’t I?” he asked. “You sure about that?”

“No, you wouldn’t,” Naomi finally cut in. “Because otherwise I’m taking that water cooler over there and dousing you.”

He whipped his head to look over at the third player of their standoff and his smile fell as he started to whine. Halle crossed her arms and smirked at him, even though he wasn’t even looking at her, as Beyond’s face continued to scrunch up.

“Naomi,” he whined. “I was just having some fun.”

“And I actually want to be able to use my desk,” she told him. “So don’t test me, or you’ll lose.”

There was something about Naomi sipping her morning coffee that came across as a power play in that moment, and Halle thought it maybe had something to do with the way Beyond flinched. In turn, it made Naomi smile at him with no small amount of humor, and Halle felt like she’d totally missed something.

“Why is he even here?” Halle asked Naomi as she and Beyond had some sort of showdown. Finally, Naomi looked to Halle. “I thought he was going to stay at home. He has a phone.”

“He’s our best shot at identifying the belladonna since the autopsy didn’t really specify. Our coroner’s slipping,” Naomi said bluntly. “Besides, I had to show him your new desk.”

“What’s this new strain of mischief in you?” Halle said back. “And keep him away from it.”

“Don’t worry, Halle. I won’t burn it down today. Scout’s honor,” Beyond piped up.

“Oh, because I so believe you,” Halle snarled. “Go sit at Naomi’s desk.”

The desks were pushed up against one another front to front, so it didn’t take much scooting before Beyond was over the border. Despite that, each scoot and each squeaky wheel pushed Halle closer and closer to getting the water cooler herself, her migraine just building.

“There. Happy?”

“Loads,” Halle said to him. “I’m fucking ecstatic.”

The way he smiled at her made her entire body go on alert, since his teeth were just too sharp and his smile just too wide. Naomi, who had looked up then, sighed and tapped his arm while Halle ran a mental check that she could bolt if needed.

“You’re slipping,” Naomi told him. “Facial features.”

“Oh.” In a blink, he looked normal again, and Halle finally breathed. “Thanks.”

It was easy to forget that this fucking freak was, in fact, something otherworldly. He was so annoying at all times that her mind had glossed over the demonic part and gone straight for “creepy weirdo” instead. In that moment, however, Halle was reminded in what felt like a slap that Beyond (a name that wasn’t even truly his) was someone who could kill, and maybe even possibly would given the chance.

How was Naomi so unphased by it all? How did she do it?

“You’ve been slipping more lately,” Naomi said. “Is it taking too much energy to always be like this?”

“I’ve been holding it up for a bit now, so I guess so,” Beyond said with a shrug. “And what do you mean ‘more’?”

“You went full red eyes when I laughed at you. It really added to the scene, frankly.”

“Why didn’t you tell me? Horrible woman.”

“Watching the waiter flinch was just too funny.”

“You took him to a restaurant?” Halle asked as Beyond smiled in that awful way of his at Naomi. “Did he burn the place down or...?”

“I behaved,” he defended. “Until Naomi threw her water at me.”

“You said I had wrinkles,” Naomi sniffed. “I’ll have you know I follow a good skin care routine.”

The oddest part of it was that Beyond actually didn’t respond. He instead seemed troubled and his mouth was drawn downwards into a small frown, and Halle catalogued it away for further thought later. There was a bigger question to worry about.

“Please tell me you didn’t take him to Daglas,” Halle begged. “That’s my favorite fast food place, and if it’s burned down, I swear…”

“No, I took him to a Denny’s,” Naomi waved off. “And all he did was burn my food to a crisp.”

“Denny’s, really?”

“They made you a new one,” Beyond huffed. “For free, too.”

“Anyways, belladonna?” Halle tried to put them back on track.

Naomi and Beyond spent another few moments staring each other down before Naomi cracked first and smiled with humor, and Halle didn’t even bother. The two fucking morons shared some chuckles before they finally looked to Halle and geez, when did she stop existing in this room?

“I was thinking we could go to a nursery that sells a couple of different kinds and see if Beyond recognizes the one we want,” Naomi said.

“Nursery?” Beyond tilted his head too much again, and Halle practically threw up in her mouth a little. “Like… Where babies are?”

“No, idiot. Like a plant nursery,” Halle sighed. “Like a greenhouse.”

“Oh, yes, _please_ , let’s go.”

He was way too enthusiastic, and Halle tried to look as intimidating as possible as she glared. The bastard didn’t even cower slightly, but fuck if she felt a bit powerful.

“I think this is a bad idea,” Halle said. “He’s just going to burn the place to the ground.”

“It’ll be fine,” Naomi reassured her. “Beyond won’t do anything. He likes plants.”

“Love them,” Beyond drawled. Halle nearly popped a blood vessel at his smirk. “They’re my favorite.”

“I swear to God, if you fucking even try something-”

“I’ll be good,” Beyond put a hand over his heart. “I swear on my mother, who may or may not even exist.”

For her health, she needed to let it go. She was going to have hypertension at this rate, and she didn’t have health insurance that would cover it, even if they were supposed to. She really did need to let it drop, she told herself, because how would she solve that problem?

“There’s no way in hell we’re bringing him!” Halle declared. “Fuck that.”

She’d deal with the hypertension later.


	7. Little Shop of Horrors

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> This man is the so sleazy and aggravating, Beyond is considering just incinerating him for the sake of all of humanity. The nursery itself is not what it should be, but hell, compared to this man, it's nothing. Naomi just wants Beyond to relax, though, even if she also hates him...

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> God, I'm so sorry for how long it's been between updates. I'm so swamped at work that I might take a while between chapters, and I'm so super sorry for that! I'm hoping that I can back into a normal schedule during the summer, so please bear with me!

Maybe, in retrospect, Halle had been totally right, and this had been a horrible idea. Maybe, one day, Naomi would also be able to admit that out loud, but today was most certainly not that day, not as Beyond continued to harass the poor greenhouse owner with way too many questions and snide comments about absolutely everything he could see. The poor man looked tired after only half an hour with the fire asshole, and Naomi secretly thought him weak.

“And you said you cross-bred these?” Beyond asked. “How did you do that? Clumsily?”

“Well, it’s a well known technique that I’m sure you can look up for your own garden,” the man said. “I actually need to go and do something, though, and can’t explain it now-”

“Hmm, I’m sure whatever it is can wait.” Beyond pointed to a different flower. “How well do you keep your poppies? Because those are wilting, Iverson. I’d take better care of them.”

She and Halle had given up trying to stop him fifteen minutes ago. She’d never known he cared so much about gardening, and if she had, then she would’ve gotten him some flowers to take care of. Maybe her one warning had been his penchant for sending her pictures of plants, btu she’d assumed it was because he wanted to set them on fire. How wrong she was. Halle was currently looking ready to burst as Beyond snorted at the greenhouse owner, and Naomi decided to try to step in.

“Beyond,” Naomi attempted again. “Beyond, please. That’s not why we’re here.”

“This man is horrible at this,” Beyond said lowly. “I should take these home. You have that backyard you do nothing with anyways. I bet the poppies would like it there. These are California native poppies, right?”

“Yes,” Iverson sputtered out. “The price for each is on the bottoms of the planters-”

“We’re taking all of them,” Beyond cut off. “Pay the man, Naomi. Or I’ll take them instead.”

Halle slapped her hand to her face so hard the sound echoed a bit in Naomi’s ears. Naomi herself groaned as Beyond held his hand out for her card angrily, his hand smoking a bit in the light.

“Do we have to?” Naomi pleaded. “We came here to do actual work, y’know.”

“Yeah, and you’ll probably just light them up,” Halle added. “Just leave the fucking poppies.”

“First of all, yes, we have to. Secondly, healthy and well watered plants are much harder to light, so fuck off, Halle.” Beyond wiggled his fingers impatiently. “So, card, please. Or I take it. Plain and simple.”

“Beyond,” Naomi tried again. “Can this be settled after we do our jobs?”

“Your girlfriend’s not into gardening, huh?” Iverson asked. The fucking sleazy weasel, she swore. He only wanted to make a sale at this point. “But she will be, when you have a pretty one in the backyard. She’ll come around.”

“The only thing I care about is making sure you aren’t left with them. Poppies are very useful,” Beyond huffed. “They’re used in a lot of different brews and charms.”

“Oh, so that’s why you care about gardening,” Naomi grumbled. “I’m so tired of you.”

“Naomi’s also not his girlfriend,” Halle told Iverson. “By the way.”

“You have a goldmine of different materials here, and you’re wasting it.” The smoke was getting more pronounced, and Naomi, with horrific defeat, pulled her wallet from her pocket. “We’re taking the belladonna too, after we inspect them.”

“Of course, I’m terrible at taking care of them,” Iverson nudged. “You’d be much better at it.”

“I should just let Beyond steal them,” Naomi growled lowly. “Seriously.”

“And I’ll call the police. Let me ring you up for this.”

“Before that, we’re doing our fucking job, yes?” Halle cut in. Her tone was dangerous and sharp, and Iverson seemed to gain some brain cells for a brief moment. “We actually came here for a goddamn reason.”

Naomi thanked whatever deity she could for Halle finally losing her patience. Especially when Beyond turned generally to her, and his eyes were blood red.

She wasn’t shocked, no. That wasn’t what she was feeling, but she jumped nonetheless. When he frowned, fangs poked out at the sides, and hmm, that just wouldn’t do. Naomi couldn’t seem to look away as she watched Beyond physically swallow down his anger, her eyes watching almost transfixed as grey seeped back into his irises. As if on their own, she reached a calming hand out against Beyond’s arm, and she almost pulled her hand back from how hot his arm was.

“Yes, ma’am,” Iverson coughed. “I’m really sorry. It’s this way.”

Beyond was looking at her, she realized. He was looking at her looking at him, or maybe he was using her so he didn’t have to look at Iverson. It didn’t matter which, really, not when she couldn’t do it anymore and looked away.

Did his stare actually have some weight to it, or was that also some odd thing he could do?

“Calmed down?” she asked him quietly. She didn’t get why it barely came out above a whisper, not when Halle and Iverson were already a bit ahead of them, but that also just didn’t matter, she supposed.

“Significantly,” he said. “Why, worried about me?”

He meant to be teasing, she knew. But he was an awful liar, she was learning, and there was a timid edge she would never have expected to him. It baffled her to no end, and oh, shit, she finally pulled her hand away from his arm after it started to rapidly climb in temperature.

“Yes?” she answered the timidness. “I bet even Halle is too, Beyond.”

He said nothing. Horrible silence stretched between them until Naomi finally looked at him again.

Why did he look so surprised?

“C’mon, we have some flowers to sniff here,” he finally coughed up. “You weird witch.”

Hell, Naomi thought.

Was his face smoking a bit?

~~

He was about to burst into flames. This was so bad. This was really bad. Naomi would kill him if he lit up like a bonfire, but fuck, he really needed to burn something.

He couldn’t smell a damn thing in this condition, and how dare humans just care about things?

Naomi was saying something to someone, for all he knew, but that didn’t matter. He sniffed at each plant in front of him uselessly, and he was only ever a bother, so why would she care enough to ask if he was okay? It’s not like he ever really did anything for her, and he never really was a big help. Shit, Halle thought he should be killed, it seemed.

So why would Naomi care?

“Finding anything?” Naomi asked him as he tried, for the third time, to process any scent at all. These plants were just as mistreated as the others, he noted, but nothing else came to him.

“No,” he grumbled. “I’m not getting anything.”

And now, he was totally useless. Completely and utterly useless, and really, she didn’t need to care. When he was more useful, maybe then it’d make more sense. Not here, though. Not now.

“Alright,” Naomi said with a short nod. “It was a long shot, anyways. Thanks for trying.”

What could he burn? What could he burn without making Naomi upset? Could he get away with torching one of his shoes?

“Sorry,” he blurted. “Maybe if I try again later.”

“Okay.” She was looking at the prices on the bottom of the planters, clearly doing some calculations in her head, and fuck it, the shoe was going. “We can try following the other leads for now, too.”

His sock was gone. That horrific thing Naomi had made him wear was nothing but ash in his shoe.

“Iverson,” Naomi called out. “Just ring up these and the poppies, and we’ll be on our way.”

“Did he find anything?” Halle asked. “Or is he just goofing off like usual? I told you it was a bad idea to bring him here.”

He blinked before untensing. Ah, blissful normalcy. He knew how to react to that, knew how to respond to it, and Beyond finally took a deep breath. Oh, the flowers smelled nice.

“Oh, Halle,” Beyond sighed out. “Sometimes, you’re like a breath of fresh air.”

“The fuck you say?” Halle challenged. “You better not be making fun of me.”

“Me? I’d never,” he hummed. “Not when you’re such a fine, upstanding citizen.”

Naomi had to physically restrain Halle at that, to his amusement. Iverson paid them no mind as he started packing up planters into boxes for them.

“Let me use the hose on him!” Halle snarled. “Or remove an eye!”

“Halle, oh my god!” Naomi huffed.

“He doesn’t need both livers!”

“Cash or credit?” Iverson cut in. “If it’s debit or credit, I need to see some I.D.”

Halle had been dealing with Iverson mostly, Beyond realized. Just the man’s voice made him want to stab him through the neck, but he restrained himself. That’d be an annoying mess to clean up.

“Debit,” Naomi told him. “Hang on a moment, please.”

Naomi gave Halle a glance over before she slowly let her go. Halle and Naomi both exchanged a look before Naomi left with Iverson to presumably pay, though Beyond felt they should’ve just stolen it all.

“I could probably sneak these roses out, though,” Beyond muttered to himself as he looked at the small bush not far from them. “I mean, there is a back door.”

“Don’t,” Halle told him off. “Naomi might be nice to you, but I won’t be. I’d fucking stab you before you got out the door.”

Beyond considered it. A minor stabbing would probably be worth the thrill of revenge. He was definitely faster than Halle, too. She must have been able to tell he was debating it, because she glared at him even more.

“Naomi’s way too fucking nice to you,” Halle huffed. “I can’t believe I have to be bad cop with you.”

“Oh? So you don’t just genuinely hate me?” Beyond batted his eyelashes at her. “Wow! Are you going soft, Halle?”

“Trust me, I made sure this is a silver knife,” Halle warned. “And I do hate you. One of us has to.”

How strange it was to have a friend. He didn’t need to be the incredible genius he was to see that Halle didn’t fully hate him. These women were so fucking weird, though, that he decided it just wasn’t worth trying to figure out. At least Halle knew how to act around him, unlike Naomi who just made him feel funny.

“Beyond,” Naomi called out from down the way. “Can you help me carry these crates?”

He gave Halle one last smug smile before he jogged over to Naomi.

~~

Saturdays were the best. They were divine and beautiful, and Naomi loved them with a burning passion. Saturdays were her one guaranteed day off each week, barring murder, and this particular Saturday saw Beyond mostly out back. The house was, for once, an odd and calm silent that didn’t happen much anymore, with only the occasional muttering from Beyond when he’d come inside for something.

She had to admit, though, the garden was coming along stunningly well, and maybe it’d been a good idea to buy all those flowers.

Her bank account was crying, but she wasn’t. He was only about halfway through planting them all, and it already looked like Naomi’s new favorite place to read a book. Maybe she’d invest in a seat to put out there, too, or a little fountain to really tie it all together.

She turned the page of whatever romance schlock she was reading and hummed to herself. Every now and then, she’d take a peek out at Beyond through the windows and see him, methodically digging, before she’d return to the warm sunlight of her own thoughts and the nice breeze of the air conditioning.

Beyond looked quite happy digging all of his little holes. It was the longest he’d gone without complaining about something perhaps ever, and Naomi tried to not laugh whenever she’d see him making name plates for the flowers. It was nearly ridiculous, and nearly somewhat cute, horrifically, that Beyond had apparently named each plant. Every now and then, when he’d come inside, she’d see the sign in his hands, and who on Earth would name a plant “Sheridan,” for fuck’s sake?

If she were being entirely truthful, she was watching him more than reading her book, but she told herself that it was just so rare to see Beyond this content. Even if it was because of the ironic love of gardening.

During one of her peeks that was perhaps a tad longer than a peek, Naomi was startled by the sound of her doorbell, and she jolted up to her feet.

“Just a minute!” she called. She threw a small cardigan on over her tank top, in some vain attempt to look normal, even if her pajama shorts had little pieces of cartoon pizza on them. “Coming!”

She rushed over to the door quickly as whoever it was rang it again. Already, she felt annoyed with whoever it was, but she smiled politely as she opened the damn thing.

“Can I help- Oh.”

Raye smiled at her anxiously, a hand on the back of his neck as he cleared his throat. The t-shirt he was wearing was one she’d given him, too, and Naomi felt very small and very suddenly.

“Naomi,” he chuckled. “Um, sorry for dropping by unannounced.”

“Why are you here?” she asked. “I’m kind of busy today…”

“Oh, uh, yeah, sorry,” Raye coughed. But his eyes fell to her pajamas, and she wanted to run away. She pulled her cardigan around herself tighter, hoping it would calm her down. “I’ll be quick.”

“What is it?” she asked again.

Raye coughed again, before he smiled politely. That anxiety was there again, but there was something else floating within it. Naomi met it with a hard stare.

“I think I left a box behind,” Raye said. “Can I go get it? It should be in the attic.”

And Naomi sighed before stepping aside and letting him in.


	8. Close Encounters

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Raye looks for whatever the hell it was he'd left in Naomi's house while Naomi just attempts to keep the weirdo outside from meeting the weirdo inside. Honestly, can she ever catch a single break? Even Beyond thinks she needs some time off...

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> How long is my job going to be murderous on my creativity? Well, at least another week. After that I'm unemployed ahaha.... But I'll find another job soon! It'll work out somehow. Sorry this took so long! I added some fluff since this is also a shorter chapter.

Raye walked further into her house with some trepidation, and Naomi was mad at him for it. This was the last thing she’d wanted today. She didn’t want to deal with Raye in her house, especially not with Beyond out back-

Oh god. Not with Beyond around.

“Um… What happened to the carpet?” Raye asked as he stepped over a burn. Naomi rushed to figure something out in her head as Raye eyed it critically. Shit, what would he believe?

“Uh, candles. An accident with a scented candle.”

That wasn’t the worst even, she supposed. Except it wasn’t anywhere near a table or anything like that, but hell. She’d been on the spot. It was fine.

“Oh,” he chuckled. “Those are really dangerous. You really shouldn’t use them.”

She bit back a comment about not telling her what to do. Almost spitefully, she made serious plans to buy several scented candles just for him, and Beyond would probably adore the damn things anyways. But that was immediately overridden when Raye looked towards the windows, and he paused.

“Wow, I didn’t know you liked gardening.” He moved a bit closer, as did Naomi, and thank fuck, Beyond had apparently disappeared for a moment. Considering the empty soil bag, he was probably getting the other one out of her car. “Nightshade’s an odd choice, though.”

“I think it looks nice,” Naomi sputtered. Her brain reached for anything, but all she got back was a whirring sound. “It’s a pretty garden.”

He shrugged but didn’t comment further, so Naomi continued moving him through the house with strategic walking and also strategic humming. Raye, never one to be impolite, got the picture and followed.

As they walked, curiosity got the better of her, and she debated asking. Well, it wouldn’t hurt that much, would it?

“By any chance,” Naomi asked, “is the box you left one with a big old book in it? Like, with some creepy words and such? Because I moved that, already.”

He didn’t answer he immediately. In fact, with all the knowledge she had of him, she could tell it was hesitation. Looking at him added the extra layer of panic to him, and well, okay, so he at least knew of its existence.

“No, I left a box of collectibles.”

“You know the book, though,” Naomi pushed. “You sure it isn’t yours?”

“...I saw it once when I was moving out,” Raye admitted. He good naturedly laughed a bit as he continued. “It creeped me out a lot, so I, uh... I assumed whoever lived here before us left it. Sorry, I should’ve told you.”

That was fair and reasonable, she supposed. Naomi sighed as she pulled down the ladder to the attic.

“I figured. It’s fine, really. Halle and I just found it a little bit ago,” she told him. “I was just wondering if you knew anything.”

He didn’t respond to that either. Instead, Raye nodded politely before disappearing into the attic for a moment. She heard him moving about and some jangling, before he emerged once more with a box of bottle caps. The box they were in was so old, Naomi actually thought it would explode into dust if she touched it.

“That thing was awful,” Raye continued. “Gave me the creeps just to look at it.”

“Yeah,” Naomi agreed. “And heavy, too. But whatever, I guess it’s mine now.”

They moved back down the hallway again, towards the main room. He was almost out, Naomi thought. He’d be gone for good, and she wouldn’t have to deal with him anymore. Relief flooded her at the thought. This much interaction was already too much with him. And this would all be without any incidents-

“Naomi, where’s the other sharpie?”

Unless, of course, Beyond decided this was the exact fucking moment to appear. Raye blinked several times as he and Beyond looked at each other for a long moment, shock written on both of their faces as Beyond held a sharpie and a piece of cardboard in his hands. The two men made eye contact, and Beyond didn’t react while Raye scrambled a bit.

“Hey,” Raye said uncertainly. Beyond didn’t move or even blink, and Naomi put a hand to her face in horror. “Sorry, I was just getting something.”

“Yes, I can see that,” Beyond said as he tilted his head. Terrifyingly, his neck cracked loudly, and Naomi pinched the bridge of her nose. A peek at Raye showed how horrified he seemed. “And you are...?”

“Beyond, this is Raye,” Naomi said politely. “Raye, this is… Well, Beyond.”

That didn’t seem to spark any life into Beyond in the slightest. He regarded Raye as if he were a mannequin, really, with the same indifference Naomi had for mannequins. Raye simply existed, and there wasn’t anything more to it.

“Odd name,” Raye chuckled out. “But unique! I like it. How did it get picked?”

Finally, a tiny spark of anything made it to Beyond’s face, and his eyes widened some more. It made Naomi sigh out through her nose a bit.

“Wait,” Beyond’s head somehow tilted even further, and Raye winced. “Raye, like her ex?”

That earned Beyond an awkward cough. The bottle caps jingled with it, but he nodded at him firmly.

“That’s me, Raye Penber. Naomi’s ex-fiance.”

“Penber?” Beyond said quietly. Beyond tilted his head the other way, his neck cracking yet again and making the two humans flinch. “Did you say Penber?”

She narrowed her eyes at Beyond as Raye went still. Poor guy was petrified by Beyond, and she couldn’t even blame him. Look at this mess. How could she subtly tell Beyond to knock it off?

“I know, it’s an odd name,” Raye slowly waved off. “But hey, we can just enjoy having odd names together, right?”

Beyond opened his mouth to say something, and Naomi panicked.

“Beyond is doing my gardening,” Naomi cut in before Beyond could say something rude. “He’s, uh, also my roommate. I mean, it cuts down on my bills, y’know?”

“Roommate?” Beyond snorted. Raye’s eyebrows went up and took some of Naomi’s dignity with them. “I’m really not your roommate-”

“ _Roommate_ ,” Naomi hissed.

There was a long moment of what was awkward silence for her and Raye, but Beyond, the bastard, seemed to enjoy it. He creepily smiled at her during it, and she swore, she was going to end him.

“Household chores, huh?” Raye chuckled out eventually. “Well, at least you’re useful.”

Red eyes snapped to Raye’s face, and Naomi’s heart leapt into her throat. If she were into betting, she’d even say Beyond looked somewhere between offended and resigned, and wow, she needed to get Raye out of the house before Beyond killed him.

Even with the thought in mind of getting Raye out, Naomi spoke as she walked to the door and held it open.

“Beyond just likes gardening,” Naomi clarified, even if she didn’t know why. “So we started a garden. It was actually his decision.”

It felt wrong to say Raye was shocked. He was somewhere beyond shocked, and Naomi didn’t know why she felt the need to defend Beyond. Hell, even Beyond looked shocked, and fangs poked out at her from where his thumb was against his mouth.

It took another long moment before Raye followed Naomi to the door. Beyond, for some absurd reason, followed as well, but Naomi didn’t super care just then. The moment Raye was at the front door, she felt relief flow through her.

“Please call next time,” Naomi said bluntly. “If there even is a next time.”

“Of course, I’m really sorry about this,” he said. He looked around a moment before he stepped over the threshold. “I was just in the area, so I came by.”

“Yeah, those bottle caps seem pretty worth it.”

They were all old, clearly from years and years ago. Raye shrugged a bit as Naomi frowned at them. That box still looked ready to disintegrate.

“They were from my dad. He used to collect them, so…”

“That’s nice,” Naomi said. Impatience was building up in her, and she refrained from tapping her nails against the door. “Bye, Raye.”

One thing she’d always appreciate about Raye was that he usually got the message. After another brief moment of him lingering, and mostly looking at Beyond instead of her, he finally gave a small wave before walking down the driveway, to his shitty Prius.

Relief washed over her quickly as she closed her door and turned to Beyond, and she found herself smiling at him.

“Sorry about that,” she told him. “I didn’t think he’d come.”

But Beyond didn’t answer for a long moment. In fact, Beyond said absolutely nothing and just stared at the door before Naomi’s face scrunched up with concern.

“Beyond?” she asked. “You okay?”

He blinked before he shrugged.

“Did you know I’ve worked for two previous Penbers?” Beyond asked her.

Naomi found herself needing to sit down.

~~

“Objects get passed down all the time in families without much meaning,” Beyond told her quietly. “He might not know anything.”

Shock wasn’t something he liked very much on Naomi. Shock made her and the house much too quiet in a way he couldn’t stand, and it seemed like even her breathing was somehow quieter. It made him lie to her, for some godforsaken reason, just so she’d fucking blink.

She’d been this way since Raye had left about ten minutes ago, and Beyond had been spouting meaningless shit for the entire time. The look on her face made him feel something, something he hadn’t ever really felt before.

“I mean, I doubt he knows the context of my contract,” he continued. “It’s not in English, so…”

Desperation was very new for him, and he hated it.

He’d never been so desperate to make Naomi look at him before. Desperation ate at his throat and made him keep silent about the way Raye looked at him, that cold and dead thing. Desperation made him lie that Raye’s words hadn’t been uttered to him before, by a different Penber, all because Naomi wouldn’t look at him.

She wouldn’t even speak. Beyond stood in the silence for a long time and nearly almost begged her to say something, but he restrained himself. How fucking pathetic would he be if he begged?

“He was so panicked,” Naomi’s voice cut through. “I think he knows something. I just… Don’t know what.”

He’d also never felt so small before. So useless.

“Are you okay?” slipped from his mouth like smoke. It was so quiet and so tiny, he almost didn’t even believe it was his own voice. “Do you need anything?”

“Hmm?” Naomi blinked and looked up. “Oh, yeah, I’m. I’m fine. Sorry, I’m just… I guess I didn’t know him.”

He hadn’t even considered that. He wouldn’t have even known to, really. Right… Raye had been her fiance. He’d been someone she thought she was close to, and he supposed that if he found out he didn’t really know Naomi, he’d lose his mind a bit. Beyond shuffled his feet as Naomi continued to stare out at nothing, and he cleared his throat.

“Can I make you anything?” he continued. “Take anything for you?”

“I’m actually kind of glad,” Naomi ignored him with. “In a weird way? I mean, I guess I made the right decision with him.”

“Oh,” Beyond coughed. “I guess so.”

She blinked a little more before seeming to accept this too, like she had done with Beyond’s entire existence. It frightened Beyond to his core, and he wondered if anything could be so unfathomable to her. Her acceptance of the world around her seemed so out of place in a human, and he bit his tongue. How supernatural of her. How frightening.

“It’s nice to be validated sometimes,” Naomi hummed. “I just wonder what all he knows. Maybe he’d have some insight with our dead guy.”

She smiled at him calmly, and for a moment, Beyond almost believed it. But the way her eyes creased were wrong, totally wrong, and the way her fingers twitched wasn’t normal, and why did Beyond want to grab them? Was that normal? Humans did it frequently as a soothing gesture, or so the TV had shown.

Her hands were cold against his. So very cold.

“You don’t have to be okay,” Beyond told her. “You don’t seem okay.”

The longest lashes he swears he’s ever seen on a human touched cold skin quietly, and heat stung her eyes. Like this, her eyes were almost a red like his from stress she wasn’t letting show. It delighted him in some terrible way, and yet no one else would see it. A human wouldn’t be able to have seen it, but he did. He saw everything, all of it, all the little details.

And it was a shame, really, since it meant no human could ever truly appreciate how beautiful Naomi was.

“I swear, I’m fine,” Naomi repeated. The edges of her face smoothed, genuine emotion taking her as she smiled at Beyond. The coil in his guts finally let up, but slowly, as the crease was finally right and properly curved upwards. “Thank you.”

He didn’t know what else to do, so he did what he’d been taught to. He waited. He waited for her to give him an order, waited for her to tell him off, anything. His knees felt weird from this position he wasn’t used to, and her hands were slowly becoming something he wouldn’t have called freezing.

And he waited. But Naomi didn’t give him any orders, and he knelt there, silently.

“Hey, um,” Naomi said suddenly. It caught Beyond off guard, and the way her eyes flicked upwards made him rush to put his horns away. “Can I help out a bit in the garden? I’d feel bad if you did all of it.”

Beyond blinked rapidly, his mind trying to process what she’d said. He tilted to the left.

“If you want,” he said simply but quickly. “But, you should wear gloves. These’ll kill you, not me.”

And when Naomi smiled and even giggled a bit, Beyond couldn’t help it.

The bridge of his nose set ablaze.


	9. Saw

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Naomi and Halle discuss Raye and formulate a plan to deal with this new addition to their already complicated lives. What the hell could he be hiding? And Beyond decides he really does like that dog next door quite a bit...

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm so sorry this took so long. I'm having some pretty bad writer's block of the "I have this all planned out, I just can't seem to write" kind. Hopefully the chapter after this is out a lot sooner than this one was, but I'm... Sadly not going to promise anything. I'm really sorry! Thank you for your patience!

“ _Raye knows about the book?_ ”

Naomi took a deep breath as Halle paced in faster and faster circles, the parking lot empty and silent around them. Well, as silent as Los Angeles ever could be, really. There was still a siren going somewhere and life happening all around them, but Naomi, having anticipated such a reaction, had picked as quiet as it gets.

“Yeah,” Naomi sighed. “Beyond said he’s worked for two previous Penbers, even. And the way Raye reacted when I mentioned the thing… He has to know something.”

“Two?! So it’s a family thing?!”

Halle spun around and started pacing her circles in the opposite direction, shifting from clockwise to counter-clockwise. The knowledge that Raye had been lying to Naomi for so long sat cold and heavy in Naomi’s chest, but oddly enough, when she thought about it much, she thought of the bridge of Beyond’s nose and the little blue flame that had sparked up, and the cold would ease up ever so slightly. And really, her brain was going on loop about suddenly really liking the color red, and Naomi was decidedly not going to get into that mess at the moment.

“Apparently,” Naomi mumbled. “Which means two previous Penbers mistreated Beyond pretty horribly. I’ve only heard bits and pieces from Beyond, but it’s bad. And Raye definitely didn’t exactly seem friendly towards Beyond either.”

“I don’t care about Beyond,” Halle brushed off. “Most people don’t like him; that’s not really shocking.”

“I care,” Naomi defended. “I’m pretty sure Raye even offended Beyond when he was there.”

Halle paused briefly to raise an eyebrow at Naomi before continuing her circles. Seriously, this was going to make Naomi sick soon. Watching Halle was making Naomi feel a bit dizzy, and Naomi tried to look anywhere else. She settled on the dead tree a ways away from them.

“So?” Halle continued. “That just further means he knows! If he can insult Beyond, that just confirms it. Raye knows, and we need to know what Raye knows. Christ, he really wasn’t right for you.”

“That was already clear from his bicycling phase.” Halle snorted at that. “But I wonder if Raye knows anything about other stuff. Like maybe he’ll know something about our dead guy, or about where people go to get supplies.”

“That’s all banking on if he knows anything besides about Beyond,” Halle grumbled. “Which he probably doesn’t.”

“Probably. But it isn’t too far of a stretch that if he knows one he knows the other, right?” Naomi pushed. “We can at least ask.”

“And who says he’ll tell us the truth?”

Naomi looked back at Halle finally, and she saw that Halle was at least seeming to finally be coming to terms with the thought of otherworldly things. That in and of itself was a victory to her, but Halle was totally right about Raye. He lied about Beyond, so why not this? Naomi let out a heavy sigh.

“He won’t,” Naomi said firmly. “That’s already clear.”

“So we’re going to have to interrogate a fellow agent?” Halle groaned. “Great. Fucking great. Maybe he’ll at least know how to get rid of Beyond or something.”

“Beyond’s staying,” Naomi admonished. “And Raye knows interrogation techniques. Our best bet is being direct and nice, Halle.”

“Fucking hell.”

“I know,” Naomi agreed. “I’m not exactly happy about it either. I’m pissed that he didn’t tell me.”

“That would’ve been something to learn after the wedding. ‘Hey, babe, just an FYI, my family passes down a _demon_ as our family heirloom.’ What a fucking tool.”

“Beyond’s not a demon,” Naomi reminded her. “And at least it would’ve been more exciting than what our relationship was.”

Halle had to grant her that. The way Halle’s mouth twisted a bit said she agreed on some level, which Naomi also took as a victory. Needless to say, she and Raye had fallen apart for many reasons.

First and foremost had been Raye’s need for control. He always wanted everything planned out and set in stone before anything ever happened, and while that was better than the other alternative for controlling men, it’d been killer for Naomi. Naomi thrived when her life had some surprises, thrived with some spontaneity, and fuck, she wanted to be the one to pick sometimes, okay?

Secondly, Raye had always held back about telling her things. She supposed that it bled into the control thing, and that the two influenced one another, but this was just another part of the pile of ‘Things Raye Didn’t Tell Naomi.’ Things that had included when his mother was in the hospital, the time he was almost fired from work, and, significantly, that he knew about the supernatural.

After those main two, it tumbled into much smaller reasons, but it'd already been too much for Naomi.

“Yeah, I’ll bet,” Halle sneered. “Honestly? Can I say that I’m a little glad he turned out to be kind of a snake?”

“You’re not the only one.”

“Comes waltzing back into your life and just. Messes it all around. What an asshole.”

Naomi’s phone buzzed, and when she looked at it, she had a new snap from Beyond. Something about it made her lighten up, and the tension over Raye seemed just a little less horrible. She took a deep breath.

“Yeah,” Naomi agreed. “I’m fucking sick of Raye. Let’s figure out a plan of talking to him.”

And Halle seemed shocked but she didn’t say anything.

~~

He wanted to laugh as Naomi stared at him, and the beast at his feet, in horror. She was blinking rapidly, as if it would make the world make sense, and Beyond just smiled widely in the way he knew she hated. The twitch to her eyebrows was worth it, especially as the dog barked at her, and Naomi took a deep breath.

“Is this…?”

“The neighbor’s dog?” Beyond hummed. “Why yes, it is. I’ve renamed her Death.”

Naomi blinked again as Death, who was once Cookie, licked her hand. Beyond felt the satisfaction of a good bit of mischief flood through him as Naomi reacted precisely how he wanted her to.

“You stole our neighbor’s dog?”

“I’m dogsitting,” he reassured her. “I was told that Death herself picked me.”

That didn’t seem to make Naomi’s confusion any better, and Beyond pouted when she didn’t laugh at his joke. The rottweiler didn’t help as it hopped up onto its hind legs and essentially hugged Naomi as she tried to process.

“Dogsitting?” she finally said incredulously.

“They came by today, apologized for it being last minute.” Beyond shrugged. “Apparently Death likes it when I play with her, so they thought I’d be a good choice.”

“You... What? When?”

“I get bored when you’re not around.”

Her jewelry caught glinted from the light of the sun as Naomi tried to even vaguely understand. Her facial expression reminded Beyond of the static he sometimes saw on the TV, even if he couldn’t put his finger on why.

“So we have a dog for a week,” Naomi confirmed. “Because… Death chose you.”

“Yes! Precisely!” She sighed heavily as he reveled in the way she used his phrase. Naomi should do that much more often, he thought, as his phrases fell a bit better out of her mouth than his. “Death chose me!”

“Oh, God, I’m too tired for this,” Naomi groaned. “Just don’t let Coo- Death into the kitchen. She’ll eat everything.”

Naomi walked away towards the bedrooms, and Death padded along with her. Naomi and rottweilers were a wonderful combination, Beyond realized then with startling speed, and he blinked next to her.

“By the way,” he tossed out, “I may have accidentally burned some of your books.”

Naomi groaned. “Which ones?”

“Um… The comic book ones. What were they called again?”

“Manga,” Naomi sighed. “You burned my fucking manga.”

“I was very much enjoying _Akazukin Chacha_ when I accidentally sat on the TV remote,” he informed her gravely. “And now I’m deeply upset that I’ll never get to finish it.”

“So you scared yourself?” Naomi questioned. Death yipped beside her as her tail went nuts, and embarrassment, oddly enough, reared its ugly head in Beyond. “Pfft. Nice going, genius.”

She gave him a small smile as she stepped into her room and pointedly stood in the doorway. He rolled his eyes at her, but he took a step back nonetheless. She shut the door with Death in the room with her, that little bitch, and Beyond waited in the hallway.

“We’ll get you a manga app on your phone,” Naomi called through the door. She really didn’t need to raise her voice at all, and he’d still hear her, but he supposed it was more for her benefit than anything. “Then you can read as much- Wait, _Akazukin Chacha_?”

“Well, I’d already finished _Sailor Moon_ ,” he said. “It was next on your shelf that didn’t have gratuitous violence.”

He heard the shifting of polyester and cotton, and the little _thwips_ Death’s tail made as Naomi changed out of her work clothes. Naomi hummed a bit as Beyond shuffled around impatiently. Why do humans need to change so frequently? What on Earth possessed them to have clothes that needed to be changed so often?

“You hate gratuitous violence?” Shock registered loud and clear in her voice, but Beyond rolled his eyes.

“They never get it right,” he said back. “Blood splatters just don’t do that.”

“I’m sorry I asked.”

She reopened her door, in what looked like far more comfortable clothing, and Death stumbled out behind her. He felt the way his face quirked upwards as she raised a single amused eyebrow.

“I really want to know your thoughts on horror movies now,” Naomi said. “Halle and I like them. I really dig _Saw_ in particular, but I think Halle’s favorite is the original _Nightmare on Elm Street_.”

“No offense, but I don’t trust Halle’s taste in anything,” Beyond informed her. “So I’ll probably hate them.”

He and Death followed along after Naomi, before both joining her on the sofa. She sighed as she sunk into the cushions a bit, before she leaned back forwards towards the coffee table.

“Hey, just so you know, Halle and I plan on trying to talk to Raye,” she said. “We want you to come with, to throw him off.”

It wasn’t that shocking, considering. Beyond hummed as he imagined Penber’s face and scowled, nearly growling at the mental image in his head, before he went over what Naomi said again.

“I’m shocked Halle agrees with that plan,” Beyond snorted. “Did she really say she agrees with me being there?”

“Well,” Naomi hesitated. There was a fascinating moment as she blinked a little more rapidly as she opened the drawer in the coffee table, before her face was obscured by her hair. “ _I_ want you to come.”

“Oh,” fell from Beyond’s lips before he’d even meant to say anything, frustratingly. He bit his inner lip gently to snap himself back out of the weird haze he fell immediately into. He failed at the gently part, though, and jolted slightly as some blood slipped into his mouth. “What, can’t be away from me for that long?”

She closed the drawer and looked almost ready to douse him with the weird smelling paint in her hands. It calmed Beyond instantly, which made him question his own sanity. What was up with him lately?

“It really is to throw him off,” Naomi huffed. “Don’t be an asshole. You don’t have to if you don’t want to.”

“I didn’t say I didn’t want to,” Beyond reassured her quickly. “Let me tease you sometimes, you demon.”

“You don’t tease. You enrage.”

She opened the small paint carefully before she looked to Death and gave her a look. Then, just as carefully as she’d opened it, she swiped the tip along one of her nails, and what the hell…? Beyond frowned at her as she swirled the brush in the paint once more.

“What are you doing?” Beyond gasped. “Why are you painting your nails?”

It was a nice color. It was nearly a ruby red, and it really stood out, but he didn’t get it. Wasn’t paint not good for humans or something? So why would Naomi put some on her hands?

“It’s nail polish?” Naomi said back as if it answered all of his questions. “I just felt like painting my nails?”

“But… It’s on your hands. And it’s poisonous.” He tilted his head at her as she made another swipe with the brush. “Isn’t that a bad idea?”

“...Right, you don’t know this stuff,” she chuckled. “It’s fine. It’s only a very small amount, so it doesn’t do anything other than be fashionable. Do you wanna try it?”

With the hand that didn’t have the paint on it, she reopened the little drawer and revealed a multitude of colors, and he hesitated. Eventually, after he stared at the little bottles for perhaps a minute, Naomi made a small grunt of frustration, so Beyond plucked the black one out with some trepidation. The materials listed as being in the thing were long and horrific, but Naomi grabbed it out of his hands before he fully wrapped his head around it.

“Good choice,” she said with an approving nod. “I like this one a lot.”

“How do I do it?” he asked, before he paused. “How flammable is this?”

“Just swipe it on, like this,” Naomi said as she did yet another swipe. “See? Just do small swipes on your nails. Try not to get it on your skin.”

The stuff smelled awful. Even Death had moved further away from it, but Beyond braved onward, opening the poison bottle gently. Then, like he was shown, Beyond attempted to swipe it like Naomi had, but unlike hers, it ended up all over the skin around his nail.

“It’s on my skin, what do I do?” he panicked.

“It’s fine,” she soothed, and by God, she’d finished one hand already. And it was so clean. “We can remove it later. Just keep going; you’ll get better at it.”

He wasn’t sure if he fully trusted that, but he did as he was told.


	10. It Follows

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> With determination, they head towards Raye's house to ask him about what he knows. Beyond finds himself disliking this Penber more and more with each passing thing, Naomi is just done with everything, and Halle... Halle is starting to have her suspicions.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So... depression is kicking my ass. I'm doing fine in most other ways, I've just been so lethargic for a so long. I'm really sorry, guys! Slowly, I'll get chapters out. This will be finished, damnit; I'm determined. So even if it takes a while, I'll get the next chapter out!

“So tell me about this particular Penber.”

Beyond was lounged across the backseat in a way that was probably extremely illegal, with his foot sometimes kicking the back of her seat. Halle took a few deep breaths to keep herself from beating him with her shoe like the rabid dog he was, but she didn’t want to set such a precedent in front of Cookie. The rottweiler was sitting in Beyond’s lap, horrifyingly, and Naomi drove like nothing was wrong.

“He’s a low tier man who wasn’t good enough for Naomi,” Halle said bluntly.

“I already figured that much,” Beyond huffed. “I meant something less obvious.”

Something she and Beyond could finally agree on. Halle smirked a bit as Naomi sighed beside her.

“He likes sports,” Naomi jumped in. “And he’s a good agent. I just want to know if he can help out with our case.”

“Why did you dump him?” the demon asked as Cookie enjoyed a good neck scratch. “I would love to know.”

“He was a control freak who was a little too into traditional gender roles,” Halle informed him.

“What we wanted in life didn’t line up,” Naomi clarified. “And he wasn’t willing to share what he wanted.”

“Oh, so he didn’t tell you things?” The demon’s face contorted into something that should’ve been scary if Halle didn’t wholeheartedly agree with the sentiment. “What a coward. What kind of things?”

“He almost got fired once and didn’t tell her,” Halle said. “Which would’ve, I don’t know, impacted their finances a hell of a lot.”

“He just didn’t want me to worry,” Naomi tried to defend, but Halle and Beyond both scoffed. “Okay… Fine. He should’ve told me.”

“I promise I’ll tell you financially affecting things,” Beyond swore. “I’m a gentleman like that.”

“He also didn’t tell her when his mom died,” Halle continued. “So Naomi never even called his father or sent a card. Made her look awful.”

Beyond shook his head with Halle, and for the first time in all she’d known him, she felt a camaraderie with him. She supposed Raye had a way of bringing people together.

“That was a big one,” Naomi admitted. “We broke up about a month after I found out.”

“Secrets are never good,” Beyond decreed. “Which is why I don’t keep them!”

“Your entire existence is a secret,” Halle cut in. “What are you even talking about?”

“Thanks, Beyond,” Naomi chuckled out softly, and Halle frowned. Her frown only got deeper when she saw Beyond hide his face against Cookie’s ears. “You’re a step up from my previous housemate.”

It must have shocked Beyond, because red eyes looked towards Naomi before he hid his face against Cookie again. Cookie then started yipping at him, before Halle’s brain suggested something so horrible that she had to mentally black out for a minute to recover.

She tossed the horrible thing aside and returned to the moment.

“That bar’s pretty damn low,” Halle told Beyond. “So I wouldn’t celebrate that.”

He blinked a bit before he settled back on gray, and he smiled toothily at Halle. “Yeah, but at least I’m not last, huh?”

“Second to last is barely any better than last.”

“He’s not second to last,” Naomi sighed. “I had some pretty bad roommates in college. Plus, he’s actually quite nice at home.”

Halle found herself looking for Beyond’s reaction at that and nearly had to black out for a bit again as Beyond, too pleased for Halle to feel comfortable with, smiled at the back of Naomi’s head. His cheeks smoked up, and Halle, in her blacked out state as that horrible thought occurred to her again, thought she could likely smoke some ham on them.

“See? I’m _nice_ ,” Beyond said as he looked at Halle again. “Naomi herself said so.”

He was too proud of that, Halle thought. She supposed demons didn’t exactly get called nice very often, but that was just too much. It just further supported her hypothesis, and she decided that she wanted to drink very badly when she got back home.

“Congrats,” Halle deadpanned. “Maybe one day, you’ll even be a decent guy.”

Cookie barked seemingly in Beyond’s defense, and Halle tried to not die as Beyond looked back at Naomi.

~~

“It’s so… Bland,” Beyond commented as they all stared at it. “And beige.”

“And boring,” Halle added in. “The lawn’s even neatly trimmed.”

“Quit it, you two,” Naomi scolded. “Stop insulting Raye’s house.”

Raye’s house faced the sun, and if Naomi were feeling anything other than complete and utter boredom with the home, she would’ve felt bad about the way the front room probably was burning up. Heavy white curtains were drawn across all of the windows, and dear lord, she knew Raye had been boring, but how had she never realized?

“You almost married _that_?” Beyond asked her incredulously. “How did you survive?”

“I didn’t,” she said back. “I dumped him, remember? Now c’mon, let’s get this over with.”

The lawn was neatly trimmed and out of the way of the walkway, and Naomi had to resist an odd urge to scuff up the neatly cared for lawn edges. The walkway itself was completely free of any dirt, but she got to have a small moment of elation as she saw Beyond’s shoes leaving a small trail in their wake. As they approached the door, there was even a stupid little welcome mat that looked like no one had ever stepped on it.

Naomi rang the doorbell and prayed no one answered.

“Naomi?”

Shit.

Raye was shocked to see her there, clearly. But he was even more shocked to see Halle, and then he was deeply concerned over seeing Beyond. Naomi cleared her throat to draw him back to her.

“Hey, Raye,” she said. “Sorry to show up without calling. Can we talk a bit?”

He blinked rapidly before smiling politely and stepping out of the way. One after another, they filed into his living room and Naomi wanted to die.

It was so pristine and bland, and God, she did really almost marry _that_ , huh?

“I didn’t think I’d be seeing you so soon,” Raye chuckled out nervously. “Not after last time.”

Beyond snorted at that, and Naomi couldn’t help the way she her mouth quirked up. That seemed to shock Raye even more than them showing up, and he sat down on his white couch.

“What’s… Going on?” Raye asked.

Halle moved around and sat in a chair in the room and looked at Naomi, clearly letting her have the lead on this. She appreciated it, deep down, and she shifted back away from her feelings.

“Not too much,” Naomi hummed. “Mind if I sit?”

She sat on the other end of his sofa, as far away from him as she could get. It still seemed much too close and much too horrific until she felt legs behind her back. Beyond was always many degrees warmer than a normal human, but Naomi needed it with how cold Raye’s house seemed.

“I’m sorry,” Raye suddenly said. “Can you not sit on my couch?”

Naomi blinked before Raye sputtered a bit.

“I meant, um… Bee… I’m sorry, I forgot your name.”

“I can’t even sit?” Beyond scoffed. “Are you serious?”

Raye looked at Naomi and suddenly sputtered even more as he likely saw how angry Naomi was getting, and quickly. He waved his hands around.

“No, I meant not on the armrest!” he puttered out. “Sorry, that came out all wrong. This couch just has some problems.”

Beyond muttered quietly that he knew what Raye really meant before standing. It made her feel a lot colder very quickly, and in a flash of anger, she looked to Beyond.

“There’s some space between Raye and I,” Naomi said. “I’ll scoot over a bit and you can sit where I am.”

She didn’t scoot far enough for him to really sit if she were honest. She didn’t want to be much closer to Raye, but she also found herself needing to be close enough to be kept warm by Beyond. Fuck, it was really cold in Raye’s house, wasn’t it?

“Yeah, that works,” Raye said slowly as Beyond sat down, nearly in Naomi’s lap, to her slight mortification. “Thanks.”

Beyond was pressed practically entirely into her side, and if she moved her hand maybe three inches over, there was Beyond’s. Why that fact had struck her, and now of all times, was beyond her, but at least Beyond was turned away from her with a hand over his face. Across the room, Halle sighed.

“Um,” Raye coughed.

Naomi blinked as she looked back at Raye, the perfect picture of nonchalance. Maybe she should have scooted over more, but she didn’t exactly care as Raye tried to keep his cool and Beyond got warmer and warmer next to her.

“We know about the book, Raye,” Halle decided to save them all from the awkwardness with. “And we know you’d wanted it.”

That got Raye to finally look away from Beyond and Naomi, and Naomi finally got a reprieve from glaring at him. Halle was now the center of attention as she sighed heavily as six eyes looked at her.

“What? I hate beating around the bush.”

“Instead you’re just beating us to death with blunt force trauma,” Beyond said back.

“I’m getting the job done. That’s why we’re here.”

“And what job is that? Butchering an interrogation?”

“One more word, and I’m getting the silver out.”

“Right now, guys?” Naomi groaned. “Are we doing this now?”

Raye made some noise between a dolphin squeak and a squawk, and the bickering duo shut their mouths. Under the weight of all of their eyes again, Raye shrunk down and curled his shoulders forwards. Naomi would’ve felt bad for him if she weren’t so upset with him.

“Oh, I see. I figured as much,” Raye chuckled. The sound, though, was warbled and too high pitched to be amusement. “I do know the book.”

Naomi waited for him to say anything else, but he froze. Frustrated, Naomi sighed.

“And what do you know about it?” she asked.

“I…” He cleared his throat twice. “I know he’s a service demon.”

Beyond shifted beside her, his temperature flaring. Without even looking back at him, Naomi put a hand on his knee to calm him.

“He’s a supernatural being beyond our understanding, but continue.”

“He’s been in the family for a long time,” Raye sputtered. “Obviously, I’d never actually met him before but… I’d heard the stories.”

Even with her hand on his knee, Beyond tensed. She squeezed, not just for him, but for herself. In that moment, she made a decision, and with one glance back at Beyond’s red eyes, she looked at Raye with determination.

“Tell me these stories,” she commanded.


	11. A Quiet Place

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Raye tells his tales from his childhood, and he gets more and more into it as he goes on. Beyond is pretty sure he's either going to die or he's going to see someone die, but unfortunately, with how Naomi is in that moment, he isn't totally sure which.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> When you have one great weekend of inspiration and you just write an entire chapter in like three days.

He’s done some terrible things. He knew that. He knew that with a deep and terrible tremor as Naomi continued to not speak in that way that made him weirdly frightened and tense. Raye, for all his blandness, had a knack for storytelling, and most of these stories were only slightly exaggerated.

Exaggerated to be more bloody, of course.

God, two hours of this crap already?

“I didn’t cut his head off,” Beyond muttered softly. “I stabbed him.”

Two hours of this, and Beyond was somewhere between seething and a kicked puppy. Shame and regret weren’t his favorite emotions in the world, but hey, he’d dealt with worse. Pain, for example, was much worse. For example, the pain of not knowing what Naomi was thinking was killing him, suffocating him slowly, and damnit, he didn’t even truly need to breathe.

If looks could kill, Halle would’ve reduced him to a pile of ash already. Naomi still hadn’t looked at him, and fuck. Fuck. If she didn’t ever look at him again, he would die. He’d fucking die. He was almost sure of it, in a horrific sort of way, that her silence would be so much worse than any silver. His only solace was her hand on his knee and the way that she seemed to grip tighter and tighter, probably in an attempt to pop his knee off. Fuck, though, he would love to see her pop someone’s knee off.

“You disgust me,” Halle muttered. She was trying to be scary, he knew, but when Naomi was like this, Halle was practically a whisper from far away. “Only stabbed.”

“It was a light stabbing,” Beyond defended again. Halle sighed deeply. “He went quickly.”

“Oh, just a _light stabbing_.”

That little rat. Raye was getting into it, too, and Beyond would’ve set him on fire if he weren’t dead certain that Naomi would’ve never spoken to him again if he did it. Or worse, Naomi would finally let Halle follow through on an exorcism, and even if he wasn’t sure it would work, the thought of losing Naomi forever was enough to restrain him. As he tapped into the most self will he’d ever had, Raye told these tales like a horror story instead of as cautionary tales about making sure your contract didn’t end up in the hands of Penbers.

“The guy was in his sixties, Raye,” Beyond interjected again. “He was nowhere even near being a young man.”

“These are just the stories I heard, okay?” Raye groaned. “Let me tell them.”

He risked a glance at Naomi. The hard set of her jaw was gorgeous, and Beyond shivered in fear. What made it even more gorgeous, though, was the way that it was turned at Raye and not him. It was enough to certainly put a small waiver into Raye’s words, and if Beyond were more brave, he would’ve moved so he could see her.

“And, as my grandma used to say, this demon-”

“Actually, I think I have the picture now,” Naomi interrupted. “I don’t want to hear any more.”

Her shoulders were tight, and her mouth was a thin line. Beyond nearly followed her as Naomi stood up, even if he couldn’t have explained why. He was almost drawn to her like a magnet, but he fought to resist. Something told him to stay put, but a quick look at Halle told him to be ready.

“Naomi,” Raye coughed. “That’s just what I know… That’s what I’d been told.”

“Oh, really?” Naomi snarled. “ _Oh, really_?”

Halle was already up and in front of Naomi, and Beyond, catching on, popped behind her and wrapped an arm around her waist right as Naomi threw a hand out towards Raye. She raged against them, her goal clear and her eyes deadly slits. Lightning struck somewhere in Beyond’s head, and thunder soon followed.

“What is your _fucking_ problem, Raye?!”

Halle was barely holding Naomi’s arm down, so Beyond reached out and snatched Naomi’s hand up for Halle. Even still, he actually had to exert a minor amount of strength to hold her there, as Naomi tugged on her arm in an attempt to maul the moron on the couch. Halle still kept a hold on Naomi’s arm, but that seemed to be more for her own sanity than Naomi’s.

“I wanted answers! You decided to lie to me again?!” Naomi snarled. “God, what is your _problem_?!”

“Naomi, he isn’t worth it!” Halle called over Naomi. “He’s not worth it!”

Beyond had seen lightning strike with less ferocity than Naomi. She pointed a blood red nail at Raye like a dart already dipped in the blood of a previous victim, and Naomi didn’t need Beyond’s red eyes when she had those claws. Raye finally flinched, jumping back as far away from her as the couch would allow, the first smart move of the day, not when Beyond wasn’t much inclined to hold her.

“I already knew these things!” Naomi continued to yell. “Beyond had already told me! Because unlike _someone_ , he actually tells me things! And he doesn’t tell me some bullshit meant to make himself look better!”

Smug pleasure made him tighten his grip around her waist as Raye’s face went cold and whiplashed. She fought further against them, even freeing herself from Halle’s grip for a moment, before Beyond squeezed her hand tighter.

“Naomi,” Beyond said lowly, “as much as I would love to watch you exsanguinate him, I doubt you should make it so obvious you were the murderer.”

Naomi looked at Beyond for only a split second, but that same ferocious lightning shot through Beyond’s limbs and settled heavily in his face. She struggled for only a brief moment longer, demonic rage flitting through her curled lips before finally, she stopped. Beyond watched her, her eyes on him as that same rage left her limbs but not the creases of her face, and realization struck him instantaneously.

Beyond adored this woman. He adored her with every fiber of his being.

Slowly, he released her, a heavy calm covering the room like a blanket. The room was dip-dyed a slight grey, smoke escaping him without his permission.

Naomi turned on her heel and stormed out.

~~

She tapped her foot faster and faster on the tile as she thought about it more. She tapped her pen louder and louder as she went over it all again and again, and fuck, how could she have ever dated such a man? How could she have almost married such a dick?

Halle and Beyond were giving her a wide area of space, her desk for once actually just hers in a way that hadn’t been true in too long. She hated the space, hated the quiet, and why was Beyond suddenly now heeding personal space when she wanted him here?

“Well, we got some stuff out of Raye,” Halle coughed into the silence. “Like… He said magic’s real.”

Naomi tapped her pen harder against the desk and bit her tongue. Calm was flitting around out of reach like a butterfly just above a canopy of trees, and god fucking damnit, calm was a ruby red and a low snarl telling her to exsanguinate Raye. She snapped her eyes over to Beyond, who continued to sit far, too far, away from her, his eyes flitting down to the pen in her hands with frequency.

“What?” she barked at Beyond. “What is it? Why are you all the way over there?”

“I didn’t want to be stabbed,” he informed her. “That fountain pen you’re holding has trace amounts of silver, and I’d like to not get a third degree burn for comforting you.”

Naomi blinked rapidly before dropping the pen into a desk drawer. Halle rolled her eyes at Naomi before Beyond rolled his chair closer once more, and Naomi, without thinking, reached out and grabbed Beyond’s hand.

Halle coughed again.

“Problem?” Naomi challenged. Halle shook her head. “I thought so.”

Halle looked over at Beyond and a quick, silent conversation occurred. Naomi shifted a bit as Beyond seemed to cut off whatever Halle was trying to telepathically say to him in favor of looking at her.

“Raye’s house was super cold,” he said. “And it smelled extremely of that cleaning thing. Lysol, right? I bet he’s doing magic.”

“We should’ve brought Coo- Death into his house with us. Maybe she would’ve eaten a pillow or something,” Naomi grumbled.

“I think she enjoyed the air conditioned car more,” Halle attempted to soothe. “And I actually… Eugh… Agree with Beyond. He’s doing magic.”

Death was back home, at that point. The big dog had slept away while Naomi had nearly killed Raye, the lucky girl, and Naomi wished she had eaten something of Raye’s. Maybe she should’ve taken Death out to take a shit on Raye’s lawn, just for Naomi to leave it. Instead, Death had taken a piss on Naomi’s lawn when they’d taken her home.

“A cold house is best for keeping ingredients,” Beyond hummed. “And it seemed pretty deliberate that I couldn’t smell anything except lemon. Well, fake lemon. Why do humans think that shit smells like lemon?”

“It smells like lemon,” Halle argued. “You’re just too sensitive.”

“I should’ve at least smacked him,” Naomi huffed. “Why didn’t you let me?”

She surprised herself by lacing her fingers through Beyond’s. She played with the end of one of his fingers absentmindedly, and she didn’t jump at all when the nail became sharper and longer. In fact, perhaps horrifically, it made her feel calmer.

“I’d pay to see that,” Beyond said smugly. “I bet you’d kick his ass.”

Beyond had claws. She’d known that, but to actually see them was calming and fascinating in a way that she couldn’t explain. When she looked at Beyond, fangs poked out at her against his lips, and fuck, she shouldn’t be looking at his mouth.

“I would,” she sniffed angrily. “But thanks for holding me back. Both of you.”

“Trust me, I didn’t want to,” Beyond snorted. “I wanna see you cut loose at some point.”

“Except she’d be arrested and her job could be in jeopardy,” Halle admonished. “Can we please get back to the fact that magic is fucking real?”

“Oh, you believe it when Raye says it, but not me?” Beyond pouted. “Rude, Lidner.”

“Don’t ever call me Lidner again. You say it weird.”

He had the slightest lisp when he had fangs. She didn’t listen further as Halle and Beyond bickered for another few moments, and returned to his claws. They were much harder than any human nails, and their color was a deep black, deeper than the nail polish she could still see a patch of near the tip. It was also a matte color while the polish was still shiny, and Naomi wished his eyes would go red to complete the look.

“Raye probably could say something about the murders, then,” Naomi cut in. “Why can’t I ever burn that bridge?”

Beyond laughed at that, his hand going warm and the supernatural bits being put back away, as if he only just realized they were out. Naomi ran a finger over the human hand now in hers, and for a tiny moment, she wished for a claw to poke her back.

“You should burn more things,” Beyond told her. “I would love to watch you burn more things than just water.”

“That was _once_ ,” Naomi grumbled. “And you were distracting me by crying that your villager moved out.”

“What?” Halle asked. “Villager?”

“ _Animal Crossing_ is a serious game and Antonio moved without telling me,” Beyond defended. “He shouldn’t have left. I had such big plans.”

“Oh, he took your game, huh?” Halle groaned. “I didn’t even know you still had it.”

“He also got a _Pocket Camp_ account,” Naomi sighed. “Which reminds me that you should buy my extra apples, Beyond.”

“How do we keep getting off track?” Halle complained. “Dead guy? Magic? C’mon?”

“Anyways,” Naomi continued on, “Raye probably could tell us something. We were supposed to have gotten him to tell us more today but… Well.” Naomi clenched her free hand and looked away, before clearing her throat. “I guess we’ll have to invite him to look at our dead body.”

“Do we have to?” Beyond whined. “I already said it’s a reanimation spell. I’m more curious about what magic he’s doing.”

“He could know a supplier,” Halle said. “And maybe he’d know something more than you do. He’s actually done magic, so I mean.”

“I’m a literal summon, though?”

“I don’t want to talk to him again,” Naomi muttered. “I think I’m going to punch him if I see him.”

There was a small amount of quiet before Beyond shifted a bit. His mouth twisted slightly in thought and his head tilted unnaturally.

“If you want, I can do that for you,” Beyond offered eventually. “It’s the best of both worlds.”

“I didn’t know you liked Miley Cyrus,” Halle sighed out. “And even I’m okay with that one. Actually, wait, Beyond. You should slap him. Imagine it.”

As the other two started to talk excitedly about ways they could mess with Raye, Naomi prepared herself for having to see him again. It ate away at her chest, put anger back in her bones, and she took a deep breath to calm herself.

She squeezed Beyond’s hand gently, needing the comfort.

Finally, red eyes blinked at her, and Naomi reached the calm she wanted.


	12. The Thing

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Halle needs to know. What's going on? Naomi, what the hell is going on? And Beyond has a little trouble keeping it all together in front of Naomi. Honestly, it just never seemed to be something he was ever able to do to begin with.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm... Very sorry. My schedule has gotten immensely crazy, everyone. I'm working full time and doing grad school and trying to have a social life at all... I really don't know when chapters will come out. I do plan on finishing this! Don't worry about that! But don't be alarmed by long periods in between chapters. Sorry!

“So what’s the deal between you two?”

Halle crossed her arms and watched Naomi closely as she shrugged. The frustration rose up to a peak before Halle tried to breathe calmly through her nose.

“Halle, don’t look at me like that,” Naomi mumbled.

“Please, like yesterday was normal,” Halle snorted. “Are you- eugh- into him?”

Naomi tilted her head in a way that made Halle think of Beyond. She seemed to be considering what Halle was saying, her eyes flickering around before something made her face scrunch up and she ducked her head.

“I don’t know,” Naomi said eventually. She finally blinked a few times while Halle groaned. “I hadn’t really considered it.”

“You nearly sat in his lap,” Halle pointed out. “And I don’t just hold random people’s hands, but that’s just me.”

Naomi blushed softly, and Halle rolled her eyes. She could see the way Naomi was trying to argue back, but the more she thought, the more Naomi blushed.

“Well,” Naomi choked out, “I was in a bad place emotionally.”

“So you sat in a demon’s lap.”

“He’s not-” Naomi cut herself off and sighed. “I don’t know, Halle. He’s a lot better than you give him credit for.”

“While his hate for Raye is admirable,” Halle declared, “he’s got a lot of issues.”

At the mention of Raye, Naomi’s face darkened. It was that, more than anything, that made Halle know what the answer was going to be to her initial question.

“Who doesn’t?” she asked, and Halle granted her that. “He’s not that bad.”

“So you do like him?” Halle clarified. “Like, you protecting him is for sure because you like him, right?”

Naomi looked away again, and Halle sighed herself. Naomi’s small ruby studs caught the light and sparkled back at Halle, almost the same color as Naomi’s face. Naomi tapped red nails against the table while Halle waited.

“Would it be so bad?” Naomi asked then, and Halle pinched the bridge of her nose. “I mean, I have to live with him for the rest of my life.”

“Because he owns your soul,” Halle reminded her. “Oh my god, I’m having an aneurysm.”

“Have I really been that protective?” Naomi continued, and Halle looked up to pray to God. “I just don’t like the amount of shit he gets.”

“Because you like him.” Halle felt the migraine building. “My friend’s in love with a demon.”

“I’m not in love with him,” Naomi scrambled.

“No, you just have a crush on him, because that’s so much better.”

Naomi leaned forwards and put her chin against her hand. She was looking down at the table instead of at Halle, but she was bordering on true red in color.

“Well,” she hesitated. “I mean.”

“My best friend might be dating a demon,” Halle sped on. “My god, he’s not even cute.”

Naomi didn’t respond and instead stared at the table in silence. Halle groaned softly at the implication, and she took a deep breath. Naomi was the worst, the absolute worst, but damnit. Halle knew what she had to do.

“Goddamnit,” she groaned. “God fucking damnit. I have to help you with this, don’t I?”

“What?” Naomi looked up in shock, before she blinked a few times. “What do you mean?”

“Give me, like, a signal if you ever want me to leave,” Halle continued groaning. “I guess. Or if you, like. Are going to do something weird again.”

“Halle,” Naomi started laughing. “Halle, oh my god.”

“You’re lucky I like you more than I hate him,” Halle whined. “I deserve a fucking medal.”

Naomi was laughing. She was clearly a bit embarrassed, but she was laughing, and that’s what Halle cared about. The shit she did for her goddamn friends.

“Thanks,” Naomi wheezed out. “That’s kind of you.”

“At least you’ve somehow gone a step up from your previous relationship,” Halle told her. “I can’t believe I just gave Beyond a compliment.”

“Raye was being such an ass,” Naomi asserted. “And I can believe it.”

And maybe, it was that that made Halle take a deep breath and try to view Beyond the way Naomi did.

~~

Naomi had been on the phone with Raye for the past hour. It made Beyond pace around, antsy and unruly, as he listened in to their conversation.

“I still need to know about all of this, Raye,” Naomi was saying, for the third time. “Tell me something actually fucking useful.”

“I did. I was warning you,” Raye said back. “He’s not to be trusted, Naomi. Why can’t you see that?”

This had been Raye’s argument for the past forty-five minutes. It was insulting to not just himself but to Naomi, and Beyond was very tempted to set Raye’s house on fire. Death whined at his feet and Beyond shushed her as Naomi clicked her tongue.

“Say that to me again, Raye, I fucking dare you,” Naomi growled. “Try me.”

Hearts can sing, right? That was a saying, right? Because Beyond got it. He got it on a personal level.

“No need to get all Misora Massacre on me,” Raye grumbled. “I’m just saying that you just don’t know what I do. You just don’t get it.”

“God, you’re fucking insulting,” Naomi snapped. “Why didn’t I ever see that?”

That has to be the best nickname ever. Naomi was quite a woman, huh? Beyond pat Death’s head and Death licked at his hand lovingly.

“There isn’t a need for personal attacks,” Raye huffed. “This could be a calm conversation.”

“Oh? After you’ve insulted both Beyond and I?” Naomi hissed. “This could be the conversation where you actually tell me what the fuck I want to know, or this could be the conversation where I let Beyond hit you.”

“Jesus Christ,” Raye muttered. “Look, stop by at some point and I’ll give you one of my family’s journals, okay? Since you won’t listen to me.”

“Was that so hard?” Naomi sniped back. “Was that really so hard? Fuck, Raye.”

“Do you want it or not?”

“I’ll come by for it tomorrow,” Naomi told him. “After work. Don’t be a dipshit about it.”

“And you don’t need to be rude about it,” Raye said back. “I’ll see you tomorrow.”

Naomi didn’t bother to say goodbye, and as the call clicked off angrily, Beyond blinked himself into the living room to pretend he wasn’t listening. Naomi stormed out of her room, and down the hallway, until she was in sight and glaring at him.

“Listening in?” she asked. She was a gorgeous storm, thunder crackling and all that, and Beyond smiled.

“Me? Never,” Beyond replied. “I wouldn’t ever do such a thing.”

“Do you think he’s being just unreasonable?” Naomi continued on instead, before collapsing onto the couch. “I mean, that wasn’t me, right?”

“Not that I was listening, but if I were, I would say I think you should’ve castrated him.”

“Okay, so not just me,” Noami sighed out. “I don’t get his fucking problem sometimes.”

He collapsed beside her, and he waited patiently. A few seconds later, she was tapping on his nails with her own to make a small clicking noise. She sneered at whatever she was thinking of, and Beyond had to resist taking a photo of her.

“I don’t want to go there alone,” Naomi said. “Will you come with me?”

“Of course,” he said. “After all, I want to watch you hit him.”

Something about that made her smile. He itched again to take a picture, but he refrained himself for the moment. He already had too many photos of her.

“What did you do today?” Naomi asked next, and Beyond hummed.

“Weeding,” he said truthfully. “And I watched some ridiculous show. About food! He had flames on him like me.”

Naomi stopped her tapping and blinked. She clamped her lips together and Beyond watched her tapping started up anew, but this time much faster.

“Were you… Were you watching _Diners, Drive-Ins, and Dives_ by any chance?” she asked.

“Yes! His name was Fieri!” Beyond bobbed happily. “My _Animal Crossing_ house looks like his shirt!”

“Does he?” Naomi let out a few snickers. “That’s nice.”

“He looks very cool,” Beyond continued. “Would I look cool in that?”

Naomi seemed to burst at that, her laughter popping out of her as she gripped his wrist. A few snorts started to escape her, too, and geez, her laugh was so ugly. Beyond watched her as she went, transfixed.

“Oh, Beyond,” Naomi wheezed. “No one looks good in that.”

“I’m sure I would,” he informed her. “I’ll go out and get some while you’re gone. Or should I use the Amazon thing?”

“What’s next? Crocs?” Naomi said with another snort. Beyond tilted his head at her, and she wheezed even harder than before. “Oh no!”

“Crocs?” he asked. “What are those?”

That made Naomi double down with laughter. Something about it made him want to flick his tail out at her, to poke and tease her, and he settled for poking her cheek with his finger.

“What’s so funny?” he asked her. Her skin was soft, and warm, with blood turning her cheeks red the more she laughed. She was completely unblemished, except for the two pimples hidden in her hair line, and Beyond took a moment to wonder at how.

“I don’t know how to explain,” she snorted out. Beyond poked her a little harder.

“Naomi,” he whined. “You’re being mean to me.”

“Stop poking me,” she said as she swatted at his hand. In retaliation, he moved his other hand up to poke her. “Ugh, rude.”

“I’m so rude,” he agreed. She smacked at his hand again. “The rudest.”

While his favorite was angry Naomi, playful Naomi was a close second. The look in her eyes was one he saw when he looked in mirrors, and Naomi, he was convinced, was actually something inhuman. It made something in him purposefully slip into red eyes and a flicking tail, and Naomi, to her credit, smacked at his tail as he used it to poke her too.

“That’s not fair,” she told him. Both of her hands were busy swatting him away, but Beyond continued his poking. “Unfair advantages.”

“It’s not unfair,” he told her. “It’s magic.”

“That’s totally unfair,” she complained. “Completely unfair that you have more limbs than me.”

“And why, exactly, should I care?”

“Because you live with me and I thought you somewhat liked me,” she fake grumbled.

She pouted, and Beyond flickered into something much closer to his actual form than he intended. 

Naomi’s eyes widened to about three times their size, and Beyond hissed.

He blinked and flickered back just as quickly, but his heart sped up. She started looking at him, her brows drawn together, and Beyond tried to shrug it all off. He must have been failing rather spectacularly if her even more concerned expression was anything to go by.

“Anyways,” he sped on, “the garden needs some cacti. Can we order some?”

Naomi blinked in shock.

~~

It was monstrous.

Absolutely monstrous.

There was a brief moment where Naomi saw it, something so completely and utterly different that it made her feel… Something. That had been far more than two eyes looking at her, and she’d been correct, it was like he simply stretched a human skin over a skeletal system it wasn’t supposed to be over. Even now, she could see the traces of where a set of claws pushed at the ends of his fingers, of where she thinks another mouth was. Flames had flickered in and out around him and her couch was burned, but she didn’t bother to check the damage.

It made her want another look. What else had she written off as odd bone structure that was something a bit more than she realized?

His hair bobbed around something she couldn’t see. She opened her mouth and closed several times before a sound came out.

“Can you see out of those other eyes?”

Beyond blinked in and out of horns then, and he gripped his phone a bit harder.

“Oh, so we’re talking about it,” Beyond coughed.

“Can you see? Or open the other mouth for that matter.”

Beyond frowned before scrunching further, and he waved a hand a bit. “No, not really. They’re basically just closed. Are you frightened?”

Was she? Was she frightened? Did Beyond scare her when he looked like that? Naomi considered for a long second before she shrugged. Beyond smoked quietly as she waved her own hand at him.

“No,” she decided firmly. “Just shocked I think.”

“ _What_?”

Her couch was on fire. Naomi sighed heavily as she stood up and moved towards the kitchen, towards her supply of water jugs for just this moment. She definitely hadn’t been frightened. Was worried a better word? Concerned?

“Help me put the fire out, please,” she told him. “Instead of making it worse.”

“What is wrong with you?” Beyond asked her instead. “You screamed the first time you saw me. Why not now?”

Naomi brought two gallons with her, and luckily, Beyond had moved and wasn’t on fire anymore. He was still smoking, and his tail flicked around quickly, but Naomi could at least attempt to save the couch.

“I know you,” she said honestly. “It’s not so different from your human look, so I mean.”

His face caught on fire again, and Naomi watched as he did. He wrung his hands together quietly, and Naomi sighed.

_Yeah. That monster’s cute._

“Can you please help me put this out?” Naomi asked.

Beyond’s flames went a bright blue.


End file.
